Author 



<i.^*Of 




Title 



Imprint 



16—47372-3 GPO 



THE 



DIPLOMATIC YEAR: 



BEING A 



REVIEW OF MR. SEVARD'S 



£\mip\ €mxtsp\\km of IB02, 



BY 



A NORTHERN MAN. 



Second Edition^ with a Postscript. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

JOHN CAMPBELL, PUBLISHER, 

419 CHESTNUT STREET. 

1863; 



THE DIPLOMATIC YEAR. 



Mr. Seward has thrown down another challenge to the world. 
He has issued a volume — rather more than twice as thick as the 
one he printed a year ago — containing his annual correspond- 
ence with all the nations of the earth. He invites criticism — 
or he sets it at defiance ; and in neither case, can he or his 
admirers, (of whom he no doubt has some,) complain, if it be 
fair and manly. Such is the aim of the following pages — the 
writer at the outset pledging himself to demonstrate, that Mr. 
Seward's pretensions to scholarship, to statesmanship, or to en- 
lightened patriotism in dealing with the foreign, or, so far as he 
has had to do with them, the domestic relations of our afflicted 
country, are utterly without foundation. 

One disclaimer the author of these pages thinks it due to 
himself to make. In this, or any other adverse criticism, he is 
conscious of no motive of private resentment — no sense of per- 
sonal wrong. At the same time, he cannot disguise from those 
who take the trouble to read what he writes, that, viewing Mr. 
Lincoln's Secretary of State as the author and willing abettor 
of the systematic outrages on the liberty of the citizen — on the 
freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press — which have 
deformed the government and disgraced the people (inasmuch 
as they submitted to them) — so regarding him, the author would 
be recreant to the principles of freedom in which he has been 
nurtured — faithless to the profession to which he is proud to 
belong, but which Mr. Seward, (himself a lawyer,) has insulted, 



if he sought to repress the sentiment of indignation at the 
manifokl wrongs that have been done — or the less elevated 
feeling, which literary and political imposture always ought to 
inspire. 

It was Mr. Seward who initiated the system of arbitrary 
arrests, and who has made, so far as in him lay, the names of 
Lafayette, and Warren, and McHenry, infamous. It was he 
who caused at least one person to be arrested, and when he 
bought his way out of gaol by a discreet application of money — 
the jDossession of which, in Bank of England notes, was his im- 
puted crime — treated the arrest and the prisoner's suffering 
with a coarse jocularity at which Mr. Lincoln's kind feeling 
revolted, though jocularity rarely comes amiss to him. It was 
Mr. Seward who, without authority, even from his chief, and as 
is generally understood from private pique, dating as far back 
as the formation of the cabinet, imprisoned the Mayor of Wash- 
ington, and was forced to release him by Mr. Lincoln's per- 
emptory order. It was he who immured in a series of Bastiles 
the Maryland gentlemen — men of refinement, cultivation and 
unblemished character — relying, in the case of one of them, on a 
document, which proved to be a forgery, as evidence of guilt. 
He continued to hold his post in the cabinet after the bloodiest 
of outrages — for such it literally was — had been committed under 
its authority, in the arrest of Judge Carmichael, who was beaten 
and dragged by soldiers from the bench to prison. It was Mr. 
Seward who, while he kept his innocent countrymen, his own 
immediate fellow-citizens, in prison, discharged Gilchrist, the 
Englishman, who had been held by judicial warrant and re- 
manded after a full hearing before a judge. It was Mr. Seward 
who applauded the Provost-Marshal at Washington for resisting 
a habeas corpus for a minor, and threatening to imprison, or, 
indeed, imprisoning the officer who brought it. It was Mr. 
Seward who placed a sentinel at Judge Merrick's door, for the 
double and kindred pui'poses of insult to him and intimidation 
to the electors of Marjdand, and so avowed it.* It was he who 

* Lord Lyons, in writing to Earl Russell, Nov. 4, 18(51, says: "Mr. Seward 
said that he had already sent me a written answer respecting the seven seamen, 
and that as to the recent arrests, they had almost all been made in view of the 
Maryland elections; that those elections would be over in about a week's time, 
and that he hoped then to be able to set at liberty all the British subjects now 
under military arrest." Parliamentary Papers, No. 1, p. 102. 



issued the orders of November, 1861, forbidding the State pri- 
soners to employ counsel, saying that he would find in such in- 
tervention "additional reasons for declining to release them." 
It was Mr. Seward who, at the very time when he was ostenta- 
tiously availing himself of the services of Prelates abroad, 
denied to a prisoner in Fort Warren the privilege of seeing a 
parish priest, in a letter recently published, which, though 
expressed with such clumsiness that no one can tell whether 
vigilance was directed at the penitent or the priest, is, in any 
interpretation, most discreditable. * These are some of the 
home doings of the Secretary of State which, entirely aside from 
the shortcomings and follies, and worse than follies of his for- 
eign policy, excuse the strong and earnest and resentful feeling 
with which every American, be he writer or reader, critic or 
student, must regard him. It may be found convenient at this 
late day, and in the face of public opinion in the North, for Mr. 
Seward's friends to paint him as a conservative and moderate 
man ; but the memory of these wrongs, and the official records 
which we propose to examine, are too fresh and will be too per- 
manent ever to admit of this. The reader will make what 
allowance he pleases for the influence on the writer's judgment 
of the feeling he thus proudly avows. 

Now let us look at this new volume of imposture and note its 
history, the circumstances of its publication, and, within certain 
limits, its contents. All are characteristic. 

Daunted no doubt by the strictures made on every side, a year 
ago, on the self-abnegation into which Mr. Seward seduced the 
President in relation to foreign affairs, he issues this volume 
under different auspices. Mr. Lincoln, in his odd way, does say 
something about foreign relations. Out of the twenty-one 

* "Department of State, Washington, Nov. 20, 1861. 
"Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 15th inst., 
with a copy of that which you addressed to Colonel Dlmick, on the 15th No- 
Tember. This Department, having adopted a rule which precludes all visits to 
political prisoners, even from Ministers of the Gospel of any denomination, has 
hitherto strictly observed it. If, however, the persons themselves shall, in the 
event of sickness, or any other reasonable cause, require the services of their 
spiritual advisers, the rule will be relaxed in favor of any one of undoubted 
loyalty. 
To the Rev. A. L. Hitselberer, Boston College." 



printed pages of the Message, three are devoted to this topic of 
admitted interest, and in these, are at least two statements of 
fact, on important points, for which Mr. Lincoln of course is 
only indirectly responsible, which the evidence shows to be 
utterly groundless. One is this — and we dismiss it incidentally, 
if for no other reason, because the Chief Magistrate has as little 
to do with the main drama of diplomacy as the chorus in one of 
Shakspeare's histories. He speaks a few words at the begin- 
ning, and then is heard no more. It is a pity those few words 
were not more truthful. 

"In the month of June last," says the Message, "there were 
some grounds to expect that the maritime powers which at the 
beginning of our domestic difficulties, so unwisely and unneces- 
sarily, as we think, recognised the insurgents as a belligerent, 
would soon recede from that position which has proved only less 
injurious to themselves than to our own country." 

Here is a positive averment made to Congress that, in June, 
1862, before the reverses on the Chickahominy, there were 
grounds to expect the European poAvers would withdraw their 
belligerent recognition. There can be no mistake about it. 
The fact is clearly stated. The time is distinctly marked. 
Now, a reference to Mr. Seward's despatches shows this was 
not so, and that at no time, least of all in June, was there any 
ground even for the hope. This is susceptible of clear proof. 

On the 15th May, 18G2, Mr. Adams wrote a despatch describ- 
ing his pathetic appeal to Earl Russell, when he "supplicated 
his Lordship" to withdraw from the position Great Britain had 
thus far chosen to assume. " I supplicated his Lordship, then, 
not to compel me to go without the possession of the smallest 
evidence that could refute the inevitable arguments that would 
be drawn from the position that Great Britain had thus far 
chosen to assume during this struggle." The Earl's answer to 
this rather undignified appeal is not given, but could not have 
been favorable, or it would have been printed. On the 22d of 
May, Mr. Adams writes that he had renewed his application 
with "little expectation of success," and this time was not dis- 
appointed; for he says: "His Lordship replied that he did not 
see his way to any change of policy at present," and added (ayo 



fear with that grim sarcasm which statesmen occasionally in- 
dulge in) that " we seemed to be going on so fast ourselves that 
the question might settle itself before a great while." These 
letters were received in Washington from the 1st to the 10th of 
June, and not another word from Mr. Adams on this subject is 
to be found during the month, or at any time. So far, then, as 
England was concerned, Mr. Lincoln was utterly mistaken. 
How was it with France ? 

As early as May 5th, Mr. Seward wrote to our Minister there 
on this subject, remarking with his characteristic felicity of dic- 
tion that " It will be a study for the historian why the Euro- 
pean powers on the first sound of the bugle of faction, so abso- 
lutely abandoned all their former faith in the Grovernment and 
people of the United States." On the 16th, Mr. Dayton, in a 
postscript, says Mr. Adams had told him of his failure in Lon- 
don, and he thinks he had better not be importunate in Paris ; 
and on the 22d he wrote that " without further aid he could do 
nothing." On the 26th, the same thing was repeated, with the 
addition of the expression of a hope that the Rebels might not 
know of the failure, for, says he, in italics, "A knowledge of 
the denial of the application would very much encourage the 
rebels in their hopes." On the 2d of June, Mr. Dayton says, 
"I have already informed youtowdiat extent this point has been 
pressed upon the attention of the French Government, and 
scarcely suppose, you desire me, under existing circumstances, 
to go further. Indeed after what has been said here, I don't 
see how it is possible to do so at present." This despatch was 
received on the 6th June, and was communicated to the Presi- 
dent, so Mr. Seward distinctly says, and on the 20th, he wrote 
to Mr. Dayton a long harangue (for it can be called by no other 
name,) about "the popular mass surged by the voice of dema- 
gogues," and "a Confederacy of discordant States bound by a 
flaxen cord," and on the same day, it being Mr. Seward's fashion 
to write at least two despatches, (on one day he wrote three,) 
per diem, he sends one which we print in full, in order to clinch 
the demonstration that, when Mr. Lincoln in his message said 
that, in June, there was ground to expect the European powers 
would withdraw their recognition of the South as a belligerent, 



he ought to have known, and his Secretary of State did know, 
that he was saying what was not true.* 

" While the President regrets that, in your opinion, there is 
" no immediate prospect of success in inducing the Government 
"of France to rescind the declaration of neutrality which it 
" adopted last year, he does not at all doubt the fidelity and 
"earnestness with which you have presented the subject; and 
" he has intended to leave, as he still leaves, the prosecution of 
"that object to your own discretion, in which he reposes the 
"utmost confidence. A change of position by the maritime 
" powers is, in his judgment, essential to an early and complete 
" restoration of commerce between this country and Europe. 
" But the interest of those powers in that restoration is now 
" fully as great as our own. Having submitted our convictions 
" with frankness, and enforced them with arguments derived 
" from a full knowledge of the condition of things in this country, 
" we can now cheerfully leave the subject to the consideration 
" of parties so deeply interested. It is proper that you should 
"understand that the British and French Governments do not 
" at all hesitate to suggest to us continual modifications of a 
" blockade, unquestionably lawful in all respects, with a view to 
"facilitate their acquisition of cotton, while the concessions al- 
" ready made, seem to the President to entitle us to the exercise 
"of some reciprocal liberality on their part." 

But why this falsification ? The secret is revealed in the 
sentence of the Message which follows the one we have quoted, 
and which was written when Mr. Lincoln's military antipathies 
were at a white heat, and when everything, defeat at home, dis- 
appointment abroad, was to be attributed to military failures. 
He says immediately after speaking of this alleged frustra- 
tion of hiH hopes abroad, " But the temporary reverses which 
afterwards befel the national arms, and which were exaggerated 
by our own disloyal citizens abroad, have hitherto delayed that 
act of simple justice." 

Here then is another positive assertion which we regret to say 
is equally groundless. That there were military reverses, 
especially on the Peninsula, during the closing week of June, 

* The otilj possible authority for the statement in the Message is a rumor 
that reached Mr. Adams in August, and which he says he did not credit. 



from the battle on the 26th to the arrival at Harrison's Land- 
ing on the 2d July, is certainly true. It was one of the weeks of 
Mr. Lincoln's panic at Washington, when and he his counsellors 
had so directed the Federal army as to scatter it fruitlessly every- 
where, and to prepare it for the crushing defeat of a month 
later. But Mr. Seward could, or would not see rcA'^erses, and 
was busy issuing prophetic bulletins to his agents abroad, which 
quite justify the bad name the word has earned. Arch-Bishop 
Hughes had been attending to the ultramontanists on the Con- 
tinent ; Bishop Mcllvaine was in England, taking care of 
Lord Shaftesbury and the evangelicals ; and Mr. Weed was 
directing the Prelatical team. " The army of General McClel- 
lan,*' wrote Mr. Seward, on the 2d June, " will be rapidly 
strengthened, although it is already deemed adequate to the 
capture of Richmond." " No American now indulges any doubt 
that the integrity of the Union will be triumphantly main- 
tained!" On the 24th, he adopted a pensive and interjectional 
style to Mr. Adams, " You tell me that in England they point 
to the delays at Richmond and Corinth, and they enlarge upon 
the absence of displays of Union feelings in New Orleans and 
Norfolk. • Ah ! well, skepticism must be expected in this world 
in regard to new political systems, insomuch as even the Divine 
revelation needs the aid of miracles to make converts to a new 
religious faitli."* On the 30th, the day of the bloody battle of 
Malvern Hill — on this day of sorrow and blood — the sound and 

* Mr. Seward is fond of what we may call the interjectional style. In a 
letter to the Minister in Belgium who, in a fit of despondency, had written recom- 
mending some tampering with the press — the nature of which does not appear, 
the despatch being suppressed, the Secretary says : " How could we attempt to 
regulate the press of Europe when we cannot regulate our own ? Where are 
the funds which would be necessary? Who the agent that could be trusted 
with them ? What an endless chapter of political intrigues should we not be 
opening! Who in our country has the skill to conduct them? No, 7io," 
(p. 660.) Apropos of the press abroad, there is a dispatch from Mr. Motley 
(p. 571) which warrants the suspicion that the foreign press is sometimes en- 
listed in the Federal cause. He sends to the Department and it is reprinted 
here, a long extract from a Viennese paper, which concludes with a passage 
which Mr. Motley may understand, but we do not, "Nothing is easier than to 
show up apparent inconsistencies and jesthetical shortcomings in many of Mr. 
Lincoln's actions of state as is done by the English Pindars of slavery, the Times, 
and Saturday Review." 



10 

scent of -which reached for many a long mile, the Secretary 
was in the City of New York on one of those strange ubiquities 
which seem, now-a-days, to afflict Secretaries and Presidents, 
taking counsel with Governor Morgan and Mr. Weed, and talk- 
ing jocularly for the newspapers. In his absence, Mr. F. W. 
Seward wrote abroad that " everything was right, and that 
General McClellan was nearer Richmond than before, and held 
his ground," and a week later, Mr. Seward himself wrote what 
now we read with wonder, that " every one of the battles was 
a repulse of the insurgents, and the two last which closed the 
series were decided victories," that General McClellan's modest 
conduct," (such was then the cue) " will be read with interest 
and admiration," winding up with one of the strange flourishes 
with which he concludes not a few of these odd documents. 

" If, as fatalists argue, a certain quantity of human blood 
must flow to appease the dreadful spirit of faction, and enable 
a discontented people to recover its calmness and its reason, it 
may be hoped that the needful sacrifice has now been made. 
If the representative parties (?) had now to choose whether they 
would have the army where it is and as it is, or back again 
where it was and as it was, it is not to be doubted that the in- 
surgents would prefer to it the position and condition on the 
Pamunkey, and the friends the one now attained on the bank 
of the James. The insurgents and the world abroad will see 
that the virtue of the people is adequate to the responsibility 
which Providence has cast upon them." 

Now, while we do not, in the least, doubt that the virtue of 
the people is adequate to any responsibility, we may be ex- 
cused, after such a rigmarole as this, for a little distrust of the 
virtue of some of those who have been elevated a little above 
the popular level. 

The truth is, that if there were reverses which disloyal men 
exaggerated, Mr. Seward throughout, even to his confidential 
agents, presisted in denying them — that these reverses, whether 
precisely stated or exaggerated, had no such influence abroad 
as Mr. Lincoln now attributes to them ; and that the whole fab- 
rication of pretended effect and cause is an unworthy after- 
thought designed to carry out the system of malignant spite 
at the Peninsular Generals, which began with McClellan's re- 



11 

moval in November and ended (if it has ended) in tlie dismissal 
of General Fitz John Porter in January. 

Thus did Mr. Lincoln, at Mr. Seward's bidding usher in his 
reference to foreign relations, with what we may mildly term 
a misrepresentation. It would have been better for his fame, 
(if such a word can be so applied,) if, as last year, he had said 
nothing about them. 

But we do not stop here. The message thus opens, " The 
correspondence touching foreign affairs, which has taken place 
during the last year, is herewith submitted, in virtual compli- 
ance with a request to that effect made by the House of Repre- 
sentatives near the close of last session of Congress." One 
would suppose from this, that Congress had expressly or, by 
implication, solicited the publication of this huge volume. No 
such thing was dreamed of. 

On reference to the record we find that, on the 9th of June, 
1862, Mr. Cox, a Democratic member from Ohio and one of 
the Committee of Foreign Affairs, offered what we suppose to 
be the resolution referred to. It is not very precise in its terms. 
It has no reference to future correspondence. Mr. Cox a-ccom- 
panied it with a brief speech, in the course of which he said 
that, as Parliament had published part of the correspondence, 
he wished to have any omission supplied.* He then added, he 
was happy to say that he could confidently assure the House 
that the best understanding existed between us and the Euro- 
pean powers. Every one familiar with the action of Congress 
knows that between the State Department and this Committee 
there is and ought to be a close sympathy — a semi-confidential 
relation which overrides political opposition. In fact, under 
existing circumstances, Mr. Cox, Democrat, from Ohio, is closer 
in aflSnity to the Secretary than some of his party friends, cer- 
tainly more so than the Chairman of the Senate Committee. Such 
a resolution would not have been offered, or such an authoritative 

* The Ministry did lay before Parliament Mr. Seward's correspondence of 
1861, printing it from the copy he furnished, omitting nothing, adding nothing. 
What the motive was, we do not pretend to divine. Mr. Cobden, in his speech 
last summer at Rochdale, intimated that the intention was not at all compli- 
mentary. Lord Lyons' dispatch to Earl Russell, sending a copy of it is very 
significant. — Parliamentary Papers, No. 1., p. 115. 



12 

speech made, but at the prompting, or with the concurrence of 
the Department. Yet, on the day that Mr. Cox was at the 
suggestion of Mr. Seward, felicitating himself and us on the pros- 
pect of the perfect tranquillity of our foreign relations, and 
fancied he saw 

" The birds of calm brooding on the charmed wave." 

on that very day, the Secretary, at the other end of the avenue, 
was writing a pettish despatch to Mr. Adams, showing, his 
regret and the President's at the very unsatisfactory con- 
dition of things. "It is impossible," said he, "here to 
understand the policy by which the British Government is per- 
suaded that the sensibilities of this country upon the subject of 
its sovereignty and true independence, in such a crisis as this, 
can be wisely disregarded." Mr. Cox was deceived. There 
really, in all this, seems to have been a tendency to indirect- 
ness, a facility of disingenuousness which threatens to revive 
for Mr. Seward the nick-name long ago affixed to a British 
Statesman — the Malagrida of our diplomacy. 

One other remarkable instance of the same sort of thing may 
be cited, and with it, we dismiss this very disparaging and un- 
pleasant view of Mr. Seward's public action. 

On the 12th of July, 1862, he wrote to Mr. Adams that 
"This transaction will furnish you a suitable occasion for in- 
forming Earl Russell that since the Oreto and other gunboats 
are being received by the insm^gents from Europe to renew 
demonstrations on our national commerce. Congress is about to 
authorize the issue of letters of marque and reprisal, and that if 
we find it necessary to suppress that piracy, we shall bring Priva- 
teers into service for that purpose and, of course, for that pur- 
pose only." 

Here again is a distinct and positive averment, " Congress is 
about to issue letters of marque and reprisal." Now, Congress 
was about doing no such thing, and Mr. Seward knew it. 
Never Avas there a more deplorable fiasco than the feeble at- 
tempt made by the Executive to induce Congress to authorise 
letters of marque. A bill to that effect was introduced by Mr. 
Grimes, of loAva, on the 12th July, the date of Mr. Seward's 
letter, and was met with such a storm of opposition from the 
Republican Senators, that it was scarcely allowed to be read. 



13 

It was called up two days later, the mover naively saying, that, 
in introducing it, he was not representing himself or his own 
opinions, but the wishes of the Administration, and on the 15th, 
three days after the Secretary had said that " Congress is 
about to authorize letters of marque," it was, by common con- 
sent, dropped — not a single Senator saying a word in its favor 
— and has never been heard of since. It was not even alluded, 
to in the House of Representatives, and we search in vain in 
this volume of despatches for any correction of this grievous 
error or mis-statement. It looks very much as if the action of 
Congress, such as it was, was invoked in order to verify Mr. 
Seward's threat, and not that Mr. Seward told the truth as to 
the action of Congress. And this is thought to be fair play — 
this is skilful diplomacy in the nineteenth century ! In former 
days we read of ambassadors of foreign States being watched 
and their despatches stolen and read. Lord Chatham, who 
was anything but a trickster, employed spies and detectives to 
dog the steps of the French minister in London in 1761. Sir 
Joseph Yorkewas suspected of taking liberties with rebel corre- 
spondence. Mr. Fox and Lord Shelburne, though in the same 
cabinet, had each an agent in Paris in 1782. Lord Malmes- 
bury was not over-scrupulous. All sorts of devices were once 
resorted to, and may be so still, for aught we know. But, in a 
small way, Mr. Seward's tortuousness has no parallel, for he 
seems to think that it is rather a clever thing to mislead one of 
his OAvn ministers abroad, as well as the Government to which he 
is accredited, by the positive assertion of a fact which was no 
fact, and then, not only never to correct the mis-statement, but 
to publish it to the world as one of the trophies of his states- 
manship. He has vastly improved on Sir Henry Wottons' 
apothegm. It is no wonder that Mr. Adams was all the time 
begging to be told the truth as to what was going on at home.* 

* There is something touching ia Mr. Adams' prayer for precise informa- 
tion, uttered in answer to a tremendous essay on international ethics from the 
Secretary. =' I do not like," says he, (p. 23) " to be obliged to confess, when 
asked questions by persons who ought to know, touching the movements and 
policy of the Government, that I am not able to answer them.'' " lam some- 
times questioned here," wrote poor Mr. Dayton, " by parties in the Govern- 
ment, as to the future course of events in the United States, and fear I indicate 
an unwarrantable ignorance, for I am constrained to say that I know nothing 



14 

Such are some of the flagrant instances of want of candor, 
not only in the papers themselves, but in the manner in which 
they have been introduced to the public — and we willingly, 
after this exposure, which, for the sake of what is left of our 
country's character, we regret the necessity of making, pass 
this part of the subject by. 

Before considering the substance of this volume, let us — for 
our pledge of demolition extends to Mr. Seward's pretensions 
as a scholar and a writer — say a few words on its literary 
merits. It is, if possible, worse than Volume first. One would 
think that at this time of day, in the efiulgence of education, 
no one would question that the style, the mode of expression of 
a Secretary of State, or even a President, was a fair subject of 
comment. Yet there are those who think, or pretend to think, 
either, that anything like literary criticism is a small business, 
and that, as in this case, the grave, didactic essays, or the scrib- 
blings, the light contributions from high executive officers, 
are too sacred to be read or commented upon, except re- 
verently. Believing, as we do, that no right thinking man can 
write, we will not say badly, or clumsily, or ungrammatically, but 
as Mr. Seward writes — in other words, that no man, who writes 
as Mr. Seward does, can be a perfectly right-minded or clear- 
sighted man ; believing this, we hold the writings of such men 
peculiarly fit subject of criticism. And so it is all the world 
over. A recent writer has well said that " There is always a 
dignified, straightforward way of saying things, and the sooner 
it is cultivated by those who frame public documents which 
all men are expected to read, the better." It is this simple 
dignity of style, this straightforwardness, in which Mr. Seward's 
compositions are so deficient. To describe his rhetoric as sopho- 
moric, is to use a mild term. It is radically defective in all the 
elements of good style, and the more he writes, the worse it be- 
comes. It is pretentious to an extreme point. It is stilted. 
It is flippant. It is feeble. It is distressingly obscure. He is 
grossly inacurate in his general knowledge, and yet excessively 
fond of parading it on all occasions, fit and unfit. He indulges 
in technicalities, and writes one day like a professor of me- 

beyond what is common to all the world, while the Government and diplomats 
here take it for granted I ought to know a great deal more." — Vol. I., p. 240. 



16 

chanics (p. 1T9), and the next like a horse-jockey (p. 105). Let 
us relieve the gravity of criticism by taking a few instances of 
this, almost at random, — throwing perhaps into a note, for the 
amusement, or it may be the astonishment, of our readers, a 
number of specimens of literary bungling with which we do not 
desire to burden our text. Two specimens will suffice here. 

There is on the eastern side of Hudson's Bay, at least fifteen 
degrees of longitude, and, as the bird flies, a thousand miles 
of measurement from the sources of the Mississippi, a region 
called "Prince Rupert's Land," perfectly well known to every 
student of Arctic adventure, and one would suppose, to the 
copying clerks in the State Department. Mr. Seward, writing 
on the 7th July to Mr. Adams, of Commodore Farragut passing 
the batteries at Vicksburg, says : " Thus the last obstacle of the 
navigation of the Mississippi has been overcom.e, and it is open 
to trade once more from the head waters of its tributaries, near 
the Lakes and Prince Rupert's Land, to the Gulf of Mexico!" 

So much for geography; but history fares worse at the Secre- 
tary's hands. He calls the motto of the Order of the Garter 
" the motto of the national arms" ! He affirms with great state- 
liness, in one of his most elaborate essays on matters and things 
in general, that " Richelieu occupied and fortified a large por- 
tion of this continent, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
Straits of Belle Isle." There is not a college boy who does not"^ '^ ' 
know that the Cardinal was in his quiet grave in the Sorbonne, ' ' 
and had been there thirty years, before the Mississippi was dis-/^'^*^***^ 
covered, either at its source or its mouth. But let the passage ' 
speak for itself. 

" Rather than do this, I willingly turn away from the spec- 
" tacle of servile war and war abroad — of military devastation 
" on land, and of a carnival of public and private cupidity on 
" the seas, which has been presented to me — to set down with 
" calmness some reflections calculated to avert an issue so unne- 
" cessary and so fatal, which you may possibly find suitable 
" occasion for suggesting to the rulers of Great Britain. For 
" what was this great continent, brought up, as it were, from 
" the depths of what before had been known as ' the dark and 
"stormy ocean?' Did the European States which found and 
"occupied it, almost without effort, then understand its real 



16 

" destiny and purposes ? Have they ever yet fully understood 
" and accepted them ? Has anything but disappointment upon 
" disappointment, and disaster upon disaster, resulted from their 
" misapprehensions ? After near four hundred years of such 
" disappointments and disasters, is the way of Providence in 
" regard to America still so mysterious that it cannot be un- 
" derstood and confessed ? Columbus, it was said, had given a 
" new world to the kingdoms of Castile and Leon. What has 
"become of the sovereignty of Spain in America? Richelieu 
" occupied and fortified a large portion of the continent, extend- 
" ing from the Gulf of Mexico to the Straits of Belle Isle. Does 
" France yet retain that important appendage to the crown of 
" her sovereign ? Great Britain acquired a dominion here, sur- 
' ' passing, by an hundred fold in length and breadth, the native 
" realm. Has not a large portion of it been already formally 
" resigned ? To whom have these vast dominions, with those 
"founded by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Swedes, been 
" resigned, but to American nations, the growth of European 
" colonists and exiles, who have come hither, bringing with them 
"the arts, the civilization, and the virtues of Europe V 

It is not to be wondered at, that poor Mr. Adams groaned in 
spirit under such a style of despatch-writing as this, in which 
interrogation and declamation are so strangely mixed, and 
all the scraps of imperfect knowledge, historical and ethnologi- 
cal, which Mr. Seward ever had, are collated in order to fill 
the diplomatic mail bag. It is, however, when poetry and his- 
tory combine that the peculiarities of the Secretary's rhetoric, 
to use his favorite phrase, " culminate."* Witness the despatch 
to jNIr. Harvey, on the 4th of August, in reply to the information 
naturally enough given by that gentleman, though in rather 
grandiloquent phrase, that he had attended the ceremony of 
laying the corner-stone of a monument to Camoens. Lest we 
may do injustice to this gem of the collection — for so Mr. 
Seward evidently regards it — the despatch being exclusively 

* In a short despatch to Mr. Motley (p. 550) he says : " Passion is as natural 
a condition for nations as for individuals. Secession is a popular excitement, 
disturbance, passion. It was needful that the new popular passion should 
culminate before it could be expected to subside, and to do this, it must have 
time. The culmination at home and abroad could be hasteued or delayed by 
accident." 



17 

devoted to the one topic of the adventurous poet of the East, 
vre quote it in extenso, begging our readers to observe the 
graceful allusion, at the end, to the Portuguese slave trade, 
with which poor Camoens had no more to do than he had with 
the discovery of the continent — he dying at Lisbon in 1579, 
and the Portuguese traffic in slaves in this hemisphere beginning 
in 1630. 

" Department of State, 
"Washington, August 4, 1862. 
" Sir : — Your despatch of June 29, has been received. The 
' erection of a monument in Lisbon to the memory of the im- 
' mortal poet of Portugal was not merely an act of national 
' justice and a proper manifestation of national pride. It illus- 
' trated the eclectic, conservative faculty of nations, by which 
' they rescue and save whatever is great, good, useful and 
' humane, from the wrecks of time, leaving what is worthless, 
' vicious, or pernicious, to pass into oblivion. 

" The incident seems doubtless the more pleasing to us, be- 
' cause it occurs at this conjuncture, when we are engaged in 
' combatting, in its full development, a gigantic error which 
' Portugal, in the age of Camoens, brought into this continent. 
' I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 

"W. H. Seward." 
The whole correspondence with Mr. Harvey, we may inci- 
dentally remark, is redolent of that rhetorical perfume to which 
Mr. Seward is so much addicted. We add a specimen — being 
the first of the series — noting in passing our entire uncon- 
sciousness of the meaning or appropriateness of the opening 
sentence, as to what the educational question is, and what Mr. 
Harvey at Lisbon has to do with the French Emperor. 

" Washington, July 9, 1862. 

" Sir : — Your despatch of June 5th was received. I think 
" the Portuguese government and nation are to be congratulated 
" upon the solution of the educational question, which the French 
" Emperor has so quietly and promptly effected. 

" How much the old European nations suffer from the immo- 

" bility of classes and masses which this new nation needs ! We 

" could receive and employ all the conscientious teachers of 

" Europe without fear of danger from their imputed heresies in 

2 



18 

" politics or in religion. France, Belgium and England are 
" agitated and excited to make war against and destroy us by 
" classes of persons thrown out of employment, who, if they 
" should make their way here, would find abundant and harm- 
" less occupation, with large rewards. Indeed, some of them 
"might become founders of States which would, at no distant 
" day, become as great as those which are disordered by reason 
" of their wants. Let us hope that the European mind may be 
" sagacious enough to discern that the cure for all the social 
" evils in both hemispheres is the migration of surplus population 
" to regions where population is deficient. If it does not like 
"us of the United States, why should Spanish America be 
"longer left to languish for want of the invigoration which 
"European emigration would afibrd."* 

We have room but for two other ludicrous instances of Mr. 
Seward's mode of composition. 

In a despatch to the Dutch Minister, Mr. Van Limburg ; for 
the Netherlands seem to have had trouble on both sides of the 
Atlantic, with Mr. Pike of the Tribune at the Hague, and 
General Butler at New Orleans, Mr. Seward thus oddly de- 
scribes the functions of his own department : 

" It appears beyond dispute that the person of the Consul 
" was unnecessarily and rudely searched ; that certain papers 
" which incontestably were archives of the consulate were seized 
"and removed, and they are still withheld from him, and that 
" he was not only denied the privilege of conferring with a 
"friendly colleague but was addressed in very discourteous 
" and disrespectful language. In these proceedings the military 
" agents assumed functions which belong exclusively to the 
" Department of State, acting under the directions of the Presi- 
"dent." 

For referring to the other, we crave some indulgence, being 

* The practical good sense of the Portuguese Minister of State is shown in 
his answer, so artlessly reported by Mr. Harvey, to the request to exclude the 
Confederate steamers from the Western Isles. " The Viscount Bandeira was 
frank enough to say to me that the islands in question had been used and 
abused by corsairs and pirates during centuries — that they were exposed and 
unprotected, and therefore might be so employed again, and that our best plan 
would be to send a sufficient force there to protect American ships against threat- 
ened depredations, and to punish the criminal offenders." — Page 388. 



19 

quite sure that, were it found anywhere but in a volume of grave 
diplomatic papers, its grossness would be inexcusable. Even 
as it is, we refer to it cautiously. There is — every adult reader 
is aware — a euphemism by which when a household is gladdened 
by the birth of a babe — the convalesence of the mother is de- 
scribed in technical and courtly phrase — " that the mother is get- 
ing on as well as could be expected." It has been reserved for 
Mr. Seward to embody this phrase in a diplomatic despatch 
with a degree of obstetrical circumstantiality which is very re- 
markable. Writing to Mr. Adams, on the 18th of July, 1862, 
(and we beg the incredulous reader to verify our literal quota- 
tion,) he says : 

" All the rivers, canals, lakes, and railroads before mentioned, 
are free from obstructions ; Vicksburg is besieged and must 
soon fall, Mobile and Charleston will fall soon thereafter. The 
work of pacification in the region concerned is going on as suc- 
cessfully as could be expected. You hear of occasional guerilla 
raids, but these are only the after pangs of revolution in that 
quarter which has proved an abortion.'' 

It is the insensibility to decorum manifested in so nasty an 
illustration that accounts for what otherwise would be an in- 
scrutable puzzle with all men of the least taste, or experience 
in public affairs, how a Secretary of State, who must necessarily 
suffer from the recoil of his own follies, could authorize, still less 
instigate the publication of many of the confidential papers in this 
volume. The simple truth is, that did not foreign statesmen 
regard, (as we hope they do,) the Lincoln Administration, and 
especially Mr. Seward, as in every sense exceptional and 
irresponsible, there is enough in this volume, its authorized pub- 
lication being the offence, to embroil us with every nation 
beyond the jagged edges of what is left of the United States. 
Especially is this the case with the power with M'hom just now 
friendship seems most precarious, the Emperor of the French. 
It is full of revelations not only of Mr. Adams' private move- 
ments and conversations in relation to the French operations in 
Mexico, and his exultation at the disappointments which seemed 
to attend them, but of an elaborate and systematic, though 
apparently ineffectual, intrigue at Madrid to detach Spain from 
its French connections, all of which may have been right enough 



20 

in themselves, but ought not, unless oflFencewas intended or 
foreign war desired — to have been authoritatively published. 
There is enough in the foolish book to exclude Mr. Adams from 
anything like unreserved social or official intercourse in London, 
and Tve can imagine Mr. Dayton's dismay and perplexity if Mr. 
Drouyn de Lliuys, or the Emperor himself were to ask an ex- 
planation of the following passage from a despatch of Mr. Pike 
at the Hague, now given to the world under the imprimatur of 
our government. 

" The movement in Mexico," he writes on the 28th May, "as 
viewed here, in well informed circles, is regarded as developing a 
pui;pose on the part of the Emperor to strengthen his prestige 
and his dynasty by coming forward as the supporter of the 
church party in that country. Though not in favor with the 
Catholics, he makes himself necessary to them in Rome, and 
he seems to aim to occupy a similar position in Mexico. It is 
undoubtedly in harmony with his plans to put money in the 
pockets of influential supporters of the empire, by giving value 
under a new regime to existing Mexican securities in their pos- 
session which are at present worthless." 

A more disparaging insinuation could not be made. The 
same remark applies with equal force to the exposure of the 
kindred follies of Mr. Clay and Mr. Motley, which, were there 
any sense of propriety left at Washington, ought, instead of 
being ostentatiously published, to be buried in the deepest 
pigeon-hole of the department. The indiscretion extends every- 
where — even where words of civility are used. Mr. De Sto- 
eckel, than whom the diplomatic body can boast of no more 
shrewd and far-seeing member, made so by his long residence 
here and his thorough acquaintance with all our public men, 
Mr. ScAvard included, is described as a well-meaning individual, 
" the excellent Russian Minister," but too tender-hearted for 
the crisis, and too apt — poor deluded man — to look at the ghastly 
aspect of a war wliich Mr. Seward elsewhere describes as not a 
" mild one." Mr. Bcrtinatti and Baron Ricasoli learn from 
this book that while, at one time, Mr. Seward is exuberant in 
his love for their sovereign, and Mr. Marsh boasts that " in no 
part of the continent was the sympathy with the Government 
of the Union so strong and universal as in Italy," meaning 



21 

liberalized Italy, at another, Mr. Seward thanks Cardinal An- 
tonelli for his especial sympathy. "The good wishes," says 
he, " expressed by thjj.t statesman are such as the Government 
expected from him, and his convictions that, in rejecting all 
ideas of concession or compromise with our domestic enemies, 
this Government is pursuing its proper and necessary policy, 
are as creditable to his Eminence as they are gratifying to the 
United States."* Nor is this all. In July, 1<^61, in the midst 
of the first Bull Run panic, as this volume admits, the Execu- 
tive invited Garibaldi to take a high command, we believe a 
Major-Generalship, in the Federal army. The offer was de- 
clined for the reason that the policy of the administration was 
not then sufficiently advanced in the direction of Abolition. 
Mr. Seward now says that it was made with the consent of the 
King of Sardinia, which, if it be the fact, gives color to the 
belief that as far back as the time we have indicated, that 
government was quite willing to be rid of the adventurous and 
troublesome chieftain, and transfer him to the Federal service 

* Mr. Motley sees close parallels between Mr. Lincoln's Government and that 
of Austria. " The Grand Vizier," writes Mr. Morris, " exhibits a warm sym- 
pathy with the Union cause" — and the Viceroy of Egypt thinks that the war 
should be prosecuted fiercely, and ' His Highness,' says our Consul, Mr. Thayer, 
' is the son of Mahomet-Ali, and may speak with hereditary authority on ques- 
tions of this kind.' " For fear our readers may not estimate the weight of 
this authority, we quote from a coteniporary, a brief statement of Mahomet- 
Ali's mode of conducting war vigorously : 

"A horrible fate awaited those who had shut themselves up in the Palace; 
they begged for quarter and surrendered, were immediately stripped nearly 
naked, and about fifty were slaughtered on the spot, and about the same number 
were dragged away with every brutal aggravation of their pitiful condition 
to Mohammed Ali. Among them were four Beys, one of whom, driven to 
madness by Mohammed All's mockery, asked for a drink of water ; his hands 
were untied, that he might take the bottle, but he snatched a dagger from one 
of the soldiers, and rushed at the Pasha, and fell, covered with wounds. The 
wretched captives were then chained, and left in the court of the Pasha's house ; 
and on the following morning the heads of their comrades who had perished 
the day before, were skinned and stuffed with straw, before their eyes. One 
Bey and two others paid their ransom and were released ; the rest, without ex- 
ception, were tortured and put to death in the course of the ensuing night. 
Eighty-three heads (many of them those of Frenchmen and Albanians) were 
stuffed and sent to Constantinople, with a boast that the Mameluke chiefs were 
utterly destroyed. Thus ended Mohammed All's massacre of his too confiding 
enemies." 



22 

here. It was fortunate the invitation was declined, for soon 
after, having taken the Archbishop of New York into his 
confidence, and sent him as one of his Nuncios to Europe, Mr. 
Seward had to extricate himself from his liberal entanglement. 
The prelate could scarcely reconcile it with his paramount duty 
at Rome, to be a fellow-labourer with one who, like Garibaldi, 
had denounced the Papacy as " the most wicked and loathsome 
government in the world," and on another occasion had spoken 
of it as " a hideous immoral monstrosity." Indeed there is, in 
this volume, abundant evidence that the Papal influence, love 
for Cardinal Antonelli and the Emperor of Austria, very early 
triumphed in Mr. Seward's heart over all liberal sympathy. 
The Lincoln administration could indeed ill afford to quarrel with 
the absolutists of Europe. But its agents abroad, the subordinate 
ones at least, did not know this, and accordingly, we find that in 
September, 1862, Mr. Theodore Canisius, our consul at Vienna, 
following the example set the year before at Antwerp, of his 
own accord, renewed the invitation to Garibaldi. " The de- 
light," said the simple-minded consul, "with which you would 
be received in our country, would be immense, and your mission, 
which would be to lead our brave soldiers to fight for the same 
principles to which you have devoted your life, would be fully 
conformable to your intentions." This time, unluckily. Gari- 
baldi agreed to come, saying, that " so soon as his wounds were 
healed he should be glad to satisfy his desire to serve the Great 
American Republic, which is now fighting for universal liberty." 
They, the consul and the hero, little dreamed of the change 
which had in the interval come over Mr. Seward's spirit. He 
was fighting no longer for liberty, but for absolute supremacy 
and imperial authority. The absolutists were smiling on him. 
The smile must be reflected. Early in October he Ijiad received 
Cardinal Antonelli's honied words. About the same time Mr. 
Motley wrote to him that the " entire sympathy" of Austria 
was with the administration in its efforts to suppress, what the 
historian of the Dutch Republic calls, " the mutiny of the 
South." The Turks and Egyptians were sympathetic. Mr. 
Burlingame thought the Taepings were on the wane, and Mr. 
Seward at once and roughly recalled poor Mr. Canisius, telling 
him that " at the present conjuncture, every care is necessarily 



23 

to be taken to avoid injurious complications in foreign affairs ;" 
that what had been done was " entirely divergent from judici- 
ous policy," and that Garibaldi was neither more nor less than a 
" rebel." This recall, thus derogatory alike to the unlucky con- 
sul, to Garibaldi, and, in view of what had occurred, to the writer, 
Mr. Motley was directed to show to the Austrian Prime Minister. 

And this revelation of inconsistency, this insult to the liberal 
spirit of the day, this confession of a grievous mistake, is put in 
print as one of the bright trophies of a statesman.* 

The stupendous folly, and worse than folly, of the publica- 
tion of this volume cannot, therefore, be too strongly stated. 
Should the normal condition of things at Washington ever be 
resumed, it will, we trust, be a warning to all future Depart- 
ments of State, and an admonition to reserve that will never be 
forgotten. The mischief, we fear, is irreparable. 

But what, let us ask, are the actual fruits of this paraded 
diplomacy ? Absolutely nothing — for we undertake, without 
effort, to show, 

1st. That there is no ground for the claim put forward by 
Mr. Seward's friends, that he deserves credit for preventing 
European mediation or intervention, for the simple reason that 
no foreign power has ever, till lately, dreamed of mediating or 
intervening, and then, when the attempt was indirectly made 
by France, Mr. Seward knew nothing about it. 

2d. That in the only matter in which he took the initiative 
and pursued it — the effort to have the belligerent recognition 
withdrawn — he absolutely failed, and why he failed. 
. 3d. That it is a budget of blunders from first to last, and that 



* Mr. Seward's det'patches to China are "unique." For example let the 
reader observe the oddity of the following, dated 22d April, 1862 : " The soli- 
citude you have suffered, and which was so honorable to your loyalty and pa- 
triotism, will have been relieved before this time by information that we have 
greatly reduced, if not altogether averted, the danger of foreign war, and have 
at the same time, obtained a very fair prospect of early domestic peace. In 
view of civil war raging in Greece and in China, and of rising commotions in Italy, 
Hungary and Germany, we may reasonably hope that Europe will become less 
severe and censorious in regard to the unhappy demonstrations of faction in 
our heretofore tranquil and united country." " It is your duty,' said he in ano- 
ther place, "especially to lend no aid, encouragement or countenance to sedi- 
tion or rebellion against imperial authority." 



24 

the blunders have been committed at the expense of his country's 
traditionary principles. 

Let us examine this subject briefly and fairly, following, as 
far as possible, the easy order of time. 

The diplomatic, like the fiscal year, under our system, is not 
coincident with the old fashioned one of the calendar. Mr. Se- 
wardls year begins and ends in December. The close of 18G1 
was very dreary, and no American, be his political afiinities 
what they may, can think of it without a shudder and a blush. 
It was the era of the " Trent." Scarcely had the Secretary of 
State bundled up and put in the printer's hand, his volume of 
first fruits of diplomacy, scarcely had he with the air of one 
contented with laborious success, written to his favorite minister 
(p. 274) that he now looked to see less disposition abroad to treat 
our flag with disrespect, when the news broke on the American 
public that Captain Wilkes had forcibly taken from a British 
steamer the Confederate commissioners, and brought them to 
this country. So much has since occurred, so much blood has 
been shed and agony endured, so sharp have been the spasms 
of exultation and despair that have convulsed us in the progress 
of this most wretched war, that it is not easy to recall distinctly 
the panic — for such in truth it was — of the closing month of 
1861, from the day the news of the capture came (Nov. 16) 
to the day when it was known the surrender was decided on. 
It is not worth while to reopen this question ; but looking back 
on it, as one can do with relative composure, there are one or 
two points noAV apparent which were not so then, and there is, 
it will be conceded, a settled judgment on the whole evidence, 
that but for the attitude taken by Great Britain, sustained as 
it was by the unanimity of the world, the Federal administra- 
tion would have evaded what they now pretend was a voluntary 
act. In other words, that it was fear — reasonable enough — and 
not the conviction of having done a wrong, or the recognition 
of a principle, which induced the action of the Government. 
This it is, and the recollection of a narrow escape from a fo- 
reign war, which causes the scandal and the blush. The world 
will never know the miserable secrets of office in that interval. 
The Secretary of State literally hid himself. On the 13th No- 
vember, Mr. Russell, of the Times, then a prime favorite, was 



25 

dining with Mr. Seward, who pleasantly told him that " the En- 
glish were the great smugglers who sustained the rebellion." 
On the 14th, there was another dinner with Mr. Seward, a 
cheerful game of whist, and "Mr. Lincoln dropped in with a 
new supply of west country jokes."* On the 16th came the 
news, and the administration went into "Retreat." As late as 
the 25th they were invisible ; indeed it would seem they were 
so till the end of the month. " I have neither sought nor 
avoided an interview with Mr. Seward," wrote Lord Lyons, 
" but it has s(3 happened, I have not seen him, nor, indeed, any 
member of the Government, since the intelligence of the cap- 
ture arrived." Then came the Message, without a word on the 
engrossing topic, and the Navy Department endorsement, and 
the vote of the House of Representatives to throw the prisoners 
into close confinement, and anxiety deepened; and so it con- 
tinued, till the 18th of December, when "the messenger Sey- 
mour," arrived with the seven days ultimatum, and the ominous 
freight of diplomatic urgency from every cabinet in Europe. 
General Scott hurried home, confident of a war ; for he did not 
dream the prisoners would be given up without more of a strug- 
gle. Private letters flowed in, filled with alarms and counsel, 
and, among them, one to the Secretary himself, to which, in the 
unravelling of this perplexity, sufficient attention has not been 
paid, for it was the only one we know of, that suggested the 
exact course which was adopted. Those familiar with Mr. Se- 
ward's antecedents know his close affiliation to Irish politi- 
cians, their sympathies and antipathies. It is the basis of his 
intimacy with the Arch-Episcopal incumbent of New York. 
On the 2d of December, 1861, Mr. Smith O'Brien wrote a long 
letter to his friend the Secretary of State, which must have been 
received at Washington coincidently with Earl Russell's des- 
patch, and which gave the clue for the dark labyrinth of diffi- 
culty — of impending danger, and threatened dishonour — in which 
he was wandering. "Answer the British demands," wrote Mr. 
O'Brien, "in the language of diplomacy. Quote authorities 
and precedents to show that you are justified by the Law of 
Nations, and especially by the example of England, in the seiz- 
ure of these commissioners. Such discussions will give you 
* Russell's " My Diarj." 



26 

time for deliberation and for preparation ; but lose not an hour 
in liberating the commissioners." This is exactly what Mr. Se- 
ward did, and thus, on the face of the evidence, it would seem 
that to this Irish hint is due the result at which the world re- 
joiced and felt relieved, and the nation blushed. It is a sad 
chapter, view it as we may, and we gladly turn from it. 

One effect, or rather consequence, of the Trent aifair, was a 
fit of comparative silence on the part of the Secretary of State. 
While, during the rest of the year, the average of his de- 
spatches is nearly thirty a month, in January, 1862, he wrote 
but ten, and those were brief and meagre. The elasticity of 
his spirit seemed broken. Mr. Adams wrote to him on the 
10th, and the despatch, though acknowledged, is suppressed. 
Mr. Marsh spoke of the "wisdom and skill" of the cabinet, 
but extorted no answer, and again wrote Mr. Adams on the 
17th : " I need not add my testimony to the general tribute of 
admiration of the skilful manner in which the various difficul- 
ties and complications attending this unfortunate business have 
been met and avoided" — and Mr. Seward turned with ghastly 
nausea away from such praises. It was, however, while thus 
abstinent from foreign correspondence, that he was engaged 
actively at home, for, about this time, occurred the correspon- 
dence with Ex-President Pierce, as to which, no words of repro- 
bation can be found too strong. One reads it now, with abso- 
lute amazement that such a violation of decency could have 
occurred, even here. 

But, with the lengthening days of February, Mr. Seward began 
to rally, and in that month he wrote no less than twenty-one 
despatches, the majority being to Mr. Adams, constituting the 
opening chapter of his new and fruitless experiments to per- 
suade the European powers to withdraw or modify their recog- 
nition of the Confederates as belligerents. It was chiefly di- 
rected to Great Britain. It began and continued in humiliation, 
and ended, as we have said, in disappointment. 

Before proceeding briefly to consider this sad story of diplo- 
matic bungling, it is due to historical truth to say, that while 
Mr. Seward directed his energies — if such they can be termed 
— mainly to influence the British cabinet, he never seems to 
have done justice, or to have fairly estimated, what these and 



27 

later revelations show was the fair and friendly action of the 
French Emperor. To England, as we will show, he was pre- 
pared to make any concession — to France, he was, if not churl- 
ish and discourteous, silent and suspicious. Lord Russell (in the 
true spirit of the Whigs) never was at heart very friendly to us. 
The spirit of Abolitionism — at this moment as acrid as ever in 
a certain, but, we hope, limited class of Englishmen — alone kept 
in check the adverse policy of a portion of the ministry. It was 
" the willing to wound and yet afraid to strike" policy through- 
out. It tried to please all sides in a surly fashion. Mr. Glad- 
stone said one thing here, and Sir George Lewis another thing 
there. They refused to recall Mr. Bunch from Charleston, and 
yet they never actually demanded the release of a prisoner from 
the bastiles. The Russell policy to America was a companion 
to what had been doing in Prussia and Denmark, in Greece and 
Rome. 

And yet, to this government, Mr Seward was never wearied 
of making surrenders. Let us see what and how fruitless they 
were. The memory of some of them is fading away, and ought 
to be revived. 

On the 4th January, 1862, Mr. Seward wrote to Mr. Adams, 
transmitting the copy of an unofficial letter he had sent to Lord 
Lyons, together with one which, " amid the intensest heat of the 
late excitement," he had addressed to the Governor of Maine. 
This is the only reference we find to what is, in our estimation, 
one of the most remarkable of Mr. Seward's many freaks — his 
offer of a transit to the British reinforcements for Canada over 
the territory of the State of Maine. The Trent affair was, as 
we have seen, only partially settled on the 26th of Decem- 
ber. That is, the surrender of the prisoners was agreed to, but 
no one can read Lord Lyons' despatch of that day without see- 
ing that he had grave doubts whether the apology would be 
deemed sufficient. It proved to be so, but Mr. Seward did not- 
know it till nearly a month later. He was right, therefore, in 
speaking of the excitement as still continuing. On the 4th 
January, news reached Washington that a large detachment of 
Bvitish troops, intended to garrison our frontier, was about to 
arrive in the steamer "Bohemian." These troops were intended, 
in case of probable difficulty, to fight us. They were to be 



28 

scattered, with others, throughout the long line of forts from 
Quebec to Maiden ; and the artillery which accompanied them 
was to be pointed at Ogdensburg, or Lewistown, or BuSiilo, or 
Detroit. They were, in no sense, soldiers crossing a neutral 
territory, for which consent, when asked, is sometimes given. 
It was not like the transit from Alexandria to Suez, during the 
India mutiny. They were sent to Canada in possible hostility 
to us. And yet the Secretary of State thought it right, unso- 
licited, and without consulting the local authorities, to send or- 
ders to the marshal and other Federal officers at Portland to 
give " the agents of the British Government all proper facilities 
for landing or carrying to Canada, or elsewhere, all troops or 
munitions of war, of every kind without exception." One reads 
such an order now with wonder and incredulity. Need any one 
be surprised that the authorities of the State of Maine were 
startled, and remonstrated, and that, too, when the invading- 
troops did not come, or that they claimed some right over their 
own soil and their own highways ? What would have been 
thought twenty, or ten, or five years ago, in our normal condi- 
tion, had a Secretary of State, or President sent an order for 
foreign soldiers, with all the accomplishments of war — "muni- 
tions without exception" — artillery and baggage wagons — cais- 
sons and ambulances to pass through the borders of a State ? 
Let it be supposed that the point to be reinforced was Windsor 
or Sandwich, opposite Detroit, to which the shortest line of ap- 
proach is from New York or Philadelphia ; does any sane man 
imagine that at either of those cities, British troops could be 
safely landed, to be carried over our railways, "with munitions 
of war of every kind, without exception," especially when it 
was known and admitted that the object of these very reinforce- 
ments was war on our borders and against us ? Neither Sec- 
retary of State, nor President of the United States has any 
right, or pretence of right, to put a foreign soldier on the soil 
of any State, and no one knows this better than Mr. Seward. 
But, in his haste to propitiate Great Britain, he forgot it all, 
and, like every other humiliation to which he subjected himself 
and his country, it was fruitless ; for we search in vain through 
his own despatches, the parliamentary Blue Books, and the 



29 

newspapers, for any kind word which this act of gratuitous sub- 
mission extorted. 

This was humiliation in the germ. Let us go on to its blush- 
ing flowers and bitter fruits. 

The Slave Trade Treaty was the next voluntary sacrifice, and 
as to this, scarcely one word is to be found in the volume of 
which Mr. Seward is so proud. It deserves a distinct conside- 
ration. 

There were once — when we had a country and a name — two 
traditionary principles closely cherished in the hearts of the 
American people : the absolute sanctity of the flag, with a denial 
of the right of police search on the ocean, and the Monroe Doc- 
trine. "We now think of them as of the dead. When in life 
and vigour — and especially is this true of the second — they were 
troublesome and sometimes inconvenient, but they had their 
root in a high national spirit, and they expressed a sense of 
national power. The fatuity of Mr. Lincoln's Government has 
sacrificed them both ; the Monroe Doctrine perhaps from neces- 
sity, but the sanctity of the flag, as we can demonstrate, volun- 
tarily, fruitlessly, and, as we think, shamefully. Mr. Seward 
may think nothing of it, but this reversal of history, this renun- 
ciation of ancient policy, gives a sharp pang. It is a companion 
shame to the Trent surrender, without the duress. When, forty- 
five years ago, Mr. Wilberforce hinted such a thing in a quali- 
fied form to Mr. J. Q. Adams, the reply was, "My countrymen 
will never assent to such an arrangement." When, six years 
later, Mr. Rush signed a convention to this eff'ect with Sir 
Stratford Canning and Mr. Huskisson, the Senate amended it 
so as to prevent its application to the American coasts, and 
then it was rejected by England. General Jackson, in 1834, 
directed his Secretary of State to say to Sir Charles Vaughan 
that " the United States were resolved never to become a party 
to any convention on this subject;" and this, said Mr. Benton, 
speaking of it, years afterwards, was " the true American an- 
swer." It was Mr. Cass's diplomatic triumph in France to 
prevent this interpolation into the law of nations in 1841. Mr. 
Webster refused to recognize it in his negotiations with Lord 
Ashburton, as did Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Everett with Lord 
Aberdeen, even in its new disguise of "visitation." "Without 



30 

intending," said Mr. Webster in one of his gravest depatches 
to General Cass, " or desiring to influence the policy of other 
governments on this important subject, this Government has 
reflected on what was due to its own character and position, as 
the leading maritime power on the American continent, left free 
to make choice of such means for the fulfilment of its duties 
as it should deem best suited to its dignity. The result of 
its reflections has been that it does not concur in measures 
which, for whatever benevolent purpose they may be adopted, 
or with whatever care or moderation they may be exercised, 
have a tendency to place the police of the seas in the hands of 
a single Power." As recently as 1858, for the continuity of 
precedents is perfect, President Buchanan said with emphasis, 
" The occasional abuse of the flag is an evil far less to be de- 
precated than would be the establishment of any regulations 
incompatible with the freedom of the seas." "I don't want 
any negotiations," said Mr. Crittenden in the Senate, " with 
Great Britain, or any discussion with Great Britain, about the 
right of search or right of visitation. That is a subject which 
is exhausted, for our minds are made up about it. I should 
think it unworthy of this Government to enter into any nego- 
tiation on the subject." "Without referring," said Mr. Dallas 
in London, " to this question more closely, it is a point which is 
essentially connected with one of the fundamental principles of 
the American Revolution, that principle being the necessity of 
maintaining on behalf of the great American people, as a great 
community, the independence of their flag. I am not now going 
to argue this question as to visit and search, but I should like, 
on the Fourth of July, to announce to my fellow-countrymen, 
that visit and search, in regard to American vessels in time 
of peace, is finally ended." "We have never," said Senator 
Seward, on the 29th of May, 1858, four short years ago, " We 
have never recognized this pretension of Great Britain, and we 
never will. Therefore, it is that, for twenty years past, I have 
never looked into a law book to ascertain the law in regard to 
this subject. It is enough that the claim cannot be permitted. 
It is enough that it would destroy the equality of nations. It 
is enough that it is a claim on the part of another power to 



31 

exercise vigilance and supervision over the conduct of this 
nation."* 

Great must have been Lord Lyons' delight and surprise when, 
if this record tells the whole story, on the 22d of March, Mr. 
Seward, in hot haste, wrote to him, oiFering to surrender every- 
thing — traditions, prejudice, associations, history, everything — 
in order to put down a trade which, according to his own show- 
ing, neither Americans, nor English had any part in, and tell- 
ing him that, if the suggestion were agreeable, he had the pro- 
ject of a Convention ready for signature. Lord Lyons has 
said that he was never more astonished in his life. He did not, 
and could not, hesitate. The diplomatic fruit at which every 
British statesman — every Minister in this country, from Sir 
Augustus Foster downwards — had been stretching out his hand, 
and looking anxiously, fell at his feet, Mr. Seward shaking the 
tree. On the same day, (22d,) Lord Lyons agreed to it. Before 
the 28th, the Convention was revised and ready for signature, 
for, we find on that day a further experiment was made on Mr. 
Seward's facility in a suggestion to make the treaty perpetual ; 
and, on the Tth April, the whole gestation being a fortnight, a 
compact was made for ten years, by which an unlimited right 
of police search within liberal geographical limits was granted 
to English cruisers, and mixed judicial commissions were insti- 
tuted on the coast of Africa, and in the city of New York. It 
was ratified, of course, by the Abolitionized Senate, and is now 
the law of this part of the land. For his share in it. Lord 
Lyons received, what, no doubt, he is on every account well 
entitled to, the honour of the Grand Cross of the Bath. If the 
venerable statesman who, in 1824, signed a treaty of this kind 
with Mr. Rush, and who still survives, ever turns his mind from 
the Orient to the Occidental world, (occidental, we fear, in 
every sense,) he may be excused for wonder at the miraculous 
decay in American statesmen, of that fierce, obstructive, chival- 
rous spirit which once snuflFed danger to national honour in any 
breeze that affected our flag on the ocean. 

Since 1842, says Mr. Seward, but one American vessel (the 
Wanderer) has ever landed an African on our soil. In March, 
1862, (p. 45) he boasted that the blockade of the Southern 
* Lawrence ou the Right of Visit and Search, pages 94 — 117. 



32 

coasts was as effective as the world had ever known. Slaves 
certainly could not be landed then. The emancipation policy 
was germinating, which, if successful, according to the theory 
of its authors and advocates, would put an end to slavery, and 
of course the slave trade. The Constitution of the Confederate 
States, (a surer guaranty than any treaty that could be patched 
up at Washington,) prohibited the trade.* There was no con- 
ceivable inducement at that time to make an anti-slave trade 
compact, unless one is to be found, (and this is our theory,) in 
the willingness to propitiate the anti-slavery party of Great 
Britain, and seduce Lord Palmerston's Government into a retrac- 
tion of the belligerent recognition of the South. "VVe challenge 
the detection of any other. We shall presently see how fruit- 
less, how pernicious, and, in the estimate of other nations, how 
discreditable it was. 

Fruitless it certainly was, if the end proposed was a change 
in the policy of Great Britain. This volume, in which, by-the- 
bye, there is a significant silence as to the Seward surrenders, 
shows that not a feature of the Russell countenance towards 
North and South relaxed, even at this sacrifice. The Earl was, 
if possible, sterner and more captious than before. With others 
in Great Britain, those we mean of a different party, the Op- 
position, whose possible accession to power a cautious diplomatist 
should always consider, the efi'ect of this humiliation was posi- 
tively evil. " The quarrel between North and South," says a 
leading organ of the Tory party, " has given us an opportunity 
which has been used of putting an end to what was left of the 
Slave trade. The dominant party of the North has not been sorry 
to gain credit cheaply for a certain degree of sincerity in its 
abuse of slavery. The Stars and Stripes cannot again, if we 
show ourselves disposed to enforce the treaty obligations into 
which Mr. Lincoln has entered, even at the cost of war, be used 
to cover this traffic. It is not to be supposed, we should re- 
cognise the Confederate States without exacting that they should 
hold themselves bound by the spirit of the old compact between 
England and the Union of which they formed a part ; and it 

* See Mr. Benjamin's intercepted letter on tliis subject, where the relations of 
the Confederate States are defined. 



33 

will certainly be the duty of the Government to obtain such 
guarantees as, without infringing the independence or affronting 
the jealous susceptibilities of the Southern people, will make it 
impossible that the Confederate flag, the flag which Lee, and 
Beauregard, and Stonewall Jackson have taught us to honour — 
shall ever be disgraced, as the Federal colours so often were, 
by floating from the mast of a slaver. There will be no diffi- 
culty in obtaining such a treaty. The Confederates have not 
the slightest desire to revive the slave trade ; their Constitution, 
their State laws, and the interests of their ruling class, as well 
as the strong opinion of the country, are against it. And they 
cannot conceive that their dignity would be compromised by 
doing what France, and Spain, the United States and Brazil, 
have voluntarily done. There will be no difficulty, then, in 
making this war the means of ensuring the final extinction of 
the slave trade. Indeed, when the North was forced to abandon 
it, it was virtually destroyed."* 

This is poor consolation for Mr. Seward's renunciation of 
ancient principles. 

Dangerous, practically, this treaty has been, or may prove 
to be. By one of its provisions the police supervision of Great 
Britain is extended to a distance of thirty leagues, not from 
certain portions, but from the whole coast of Cuba. Now, 
waiving the apparent indecorum of defining the extent of such 
a concession by measurement from the limits of a friendly, 
though jealous power, it is apparent that aline of thirty leagues 
from Point Yeacos or Matanzas would touch the Florida Keys, 
so that our coast, supposing it still to be ours, and narrow seas, 
are placed- under this annoying surveillance. No other inde- 
pendent power on earth, not even Hayti, ever made such a con- 
cession, f and this, too, at a moment, when, in view of possible 
contingencies, it is the obvious policy of the Northern Govern- 
ment to remove as far away as possible the naval forces of Euro- 
pean powers, who, though to-day neutrals, may to-morrow 
become belligerents. In a letter from the British Charg^ 
d'Affaires of September 13, 1862, is a formidable list of " Her 

* The Standard, January 6, 1863. 

f Article IV., Treaty of Hayti with Great Britain, 1839. 

3 



34 

Majesty's ships employed in the suppression of the slave trade 
at North America and the West Indies," comprising two line-of- 
battle ships, (an odd craft for such a service,) four frigates, four 
corvettes, and eleven gun-boats, with an aggregate armament of 
485 guns, twice as many as are appropriated to the whole continent 
of Africa, from Sierra Leone to the mouth of the Red Sea. Of 
course, the presence of such squadrons, hoAvever discreetly man- 
aged, leads to trouble. This volume contains more than one 
complaint of "unreasonable searches and seizures" (p. 284) 
under this very treaty, and the old story of harsh conduct to 
our "innocent merchantmen" begins to fill our newspapers.* 

If thus fruitless, and with this germ of possible mischief, can 
such a compact be otherwise than discreditable in the estima- 
tion of foreign nations, and especially of that one great Power 
who, on this question of the freedom of the seas, has stood firmly 
by us ? On this topic, the volume is painfully silent, and if the 
French Government uttered or intimated sorrow, or dissent, or 
reproach, it has been suppressed. The Spanish authorities were 
not so reticent, for we find in a despatch from Mr. Perry, at 
Madrid, (p. 509,) the following curious statement of what that 
Government thought, which we quote at length : 

" At a recent interview with Mr. Calderon Collantes, that 
" minister enquired if I had received a copy of the treaty re- 
" cently concluded between the United States and England, 
" concerning the mutual right of search, for the suppression of 
" the African slave trade. He was much surprised that after 
" combatting that principle so long, the United States should 
" have yielded now a right so exceedingly liable to be abused 
" in practice, and he was very curious to know what provisions 
" had been stipulated to guard the exercise of the right from 
" such abuse. I replied, regretting I could give no information 
" other than what Mr. Calderon had himself seen in the news- 
" papers. I understood, however, that the stoppage of the use 

* The case of the 'J Morning Star," reported in the Evening Post of January 
16th, 1863. In August last, Mr. Stuart, the British Chargb, informed Mr. 
Seward that Her Majesty's ship Griffin had captured and burned off Loando 
an American barque, fitted for the slave trade, and belonging to New York. 
The letter was acknowledged by Mr. Seward, who oddly enough said, I 
thank you for the information thus communicated, lohich is in every respect en- 
tirely acceptable and gratifying. 



35 

" of the American flag in the slave trade was an object which 
" would naturally commend itself to the favor of the present 
" Government of the United States, and I enquired if Spain 
" had not herself conceded the same right. Mr. Calderon said 
" that she had, at a period in her history which could not be 
" recalled with pleasure, but that, ever since he himself had held 
" the portfolio of foreign affairs, he had been desirous of an op- 
" portunity to revise that whole treaty, in which the right of 
" search was thus granted to Great Britain, The exercise of 
" this right was vexatious, and besides, the English were always 
" talking, in Parliament and out, of their having purchased this 
" right of Spain for £-iO,000,* sterling money, always putting 
" their money forward, and he (Mr. Calderon) would be exceed- 
" ingly glad of an opportunity to give them their £40,000, and 
" have the treaty back again. Mr. Calderon asked me if I sup- 
" posed the recent treaty would be ratified by the American 
" Senate. I replied to him that I had no reasonable doubt that 
" it would be, and remarked that I supposed that England 
" was now taking steps to obtain the same concession from 
" the Government of France. Mr. Calderon said he had little 
" doubt of it, but he wished to see the American treaty, as it 
" might aiford a basis for demanding a revision of the Spanish 
" treaty, as to the manner in which this right was to be exer- 
" cised. Though perhaps this conversation was not intended 
" by Mr. Calderon to be reported to you, I have thought it 
" interesting." 

This seems, naturally enough, to have irritated Mr. Seward, 
for, on the 2d August, he thus pettishly retorts, giving a fling 
at the Spanish authorities, which was neither discreet nor 
dignified. 

" Your despatch of July 11 (No. 69), has been received. 
" The African slave trade, Avhich has been so long clandestinely 
" carried on from American ports, was a mercenary traffic, 
" without even the poor pretext that it brought labourers into 
" our country, or that other or worse pretext, that is was neces- 
" sary to the safety or prosperity of any State or section. It 
" was carried on in defiance of our laws, by corrupting the ad- 

■* So printed in these despatches. The sum was £400,000. 



36 

*' ministration of justice. The treaty to which you refer con- 
" tains no provisions that can embarrass an honest and Lawful 
" trade, and none that can inflict a wound upon the national 
" pride. It was freely offered by this Government to Great 
" Britain, not bought, or solicited by that Government. It is 
" in harmony with the sentiments of the American people. It 
" Avas ratified by the Senate unanimously, and afterward dis- 
" tinctly approved, with not less unanimity, by both Houses of 
" Congress. Not a voice has been raised against it in the coun- 
" try. I send you a copy of it for Mr. Calderon, as you have 
" requested." 

Thus, then, has Mr. Seward, without apparent compensation, 
bound all that is left of this Northern nation in chains, from 
which there is no peaceful escape. That there is not a secret 
history in this inexplicable transaction, an understanding of 
future sympathy and co-operation between the contracting 
parties, the Lincoln and Russell Governments, in case their 
tenure of power is prolonged, we are far from affirming. The 
suspicion, the fear, the hope — describe it as we may — that this 
sacrifice is not made in vain, and that the English administra- 
tion may find it to be its interest to make this a substantial con- 
tract, by giving strength to the party who voluntarily tendered it, 
has more than once come like a dark shadow over us. An anti- 
slave-trade treaty with the North alone, would be the idlest of 
forms, except on the theory that, as heretofore, all the slave 
trading is to be carried on with Northern capital and in North- 
ern bottoms. Then, it may be of value, even if the Southern 
Confederacy be established. Otherwise, it is, as we have said, 
utterly fruitless. Fruitless, we have it shown to be as to im- 
mediate results. 

It was in this same month of March, that the administration 
assembled and brought into action all its diplomatic array abroad, 
regular and irregular. Not only were Mr. Weed and the Bishops 
on the spot, but, as this volume shoAVS, other combinations were 
initiated. 

The convocation of this new diplomatic Congress, was for- 
mally announced to our ministers abroad, who appear to have 
been confounded by the news. "When in November last," 



87 

said Mr. Seward, " we thought we had reason to apprehend 
new and very serious dangers in Europe, the subject was taken 
into consideration by the President at a full meeting of the cab- 
inet. It was understood that the insurgents were represented 
abroad, by a number of active, unscrupulous, and plausible men 
who manifestly were acquiring influence in society, and in the 
press, and employing it with dangerous eifect, and it was 
thought that such efforts could be profitably counteracted by the 
presence in London and Paris of some loyal, high-spirited, and 
intellectual men, of social position and character. We consid- 
ered that the presence of such persons there, unless they should 
act tvith more discretion than we could confidently expect, would 
annoy, and possibly embarrass, our ministers abroad. It was 
decided that hazard must be incurred in view of dangers which 
seemed imminent." 

A better reason for not sending these semi-official agents 
abroad could hardly be given than in the lines we have ventured 
to italicise. So thought Mr. Adams, for we search this book in 
vain for any expression, on his part, of gratitude for the sug- 
gestion. Who the new agents were, does not appear in these 
despatches, though aliunde, we know all about them. The 
Bishops and Mr. Weed hurried to the rescue. The latter, 
the accredited friend, the almost partner of the Secretary of 
State, was received in England with great friendliness and ap- 
parent unreserve. He was the guest of Lady Russell, at Rich- 
mond Park, and duly wrote home letters, to be printed in the 
Albany Evening Journal, full of local gossip picked up in 
her drawing-room, and criticising the details of her houso- 
hold. Occasionally, his services were needed on a more pub- 
lic stage. Bishop Mcllvaine, who seems to have been in the 
service of the administration from the time of his visit to 
England, until the adjournment of the triennial Convention in 
October, 1862, always active, meddlesome, intrusive, sometimes 
needed the assistance of his lay colleague, and we find that Mr. 
Weed, the conservative of 1863, was not far behind the most 
extreme anti-slavery propagandists, in the spring of 1862. 

On the 3d February, 1862, Mr. Weed addressed a meet- 



38 

ing at No. 2 Pall, Mall, and, among other tilings, said : 
" As to the prospects of the future, the administration not only 
desired, but expected emancipation as the fruit and result of 
the war. Slavery was and would be burned out -of every acre 
and rood of territory conquered from the rebels ; so that, by 
process of war and by legal enactment, if the United States 
Government were successful, slavery would cease to exist."* 

Not content with Mr. Weed and the Prelates, Mr. Seward 
summoned Mr. Motley, from Vienna to London, to confer and co- 
operate with Mr. Adams. 

And here, let us pause over another wreck of reputation 
which is seen through the haze of this official correspondence. Mr. 
John Lothrop Motley — not, as he tells us, the Emperor of Austria 
imagined (p. 557), " a German exile," but " a descendant of the 
early Pilgrims of New England," had, before he was tempted 
into diplomatic paths, a high position in American authorship. 
Justly or unjustly, he had gained a large share of favour on 
both sides of the Atlantic, and when his appointment to Austria 
was announced, those who were willing to judge Mr. Seward 
kindly were content to see a parallel to the case of Washington 
Irving, whom Mr. Webster sent as Minister to Spain years ago, 
and whose official action, while it involved no neglect of public 
interests or duties, was improved by labour in the cause of let- 
ters, far dearer to him than politics. But " the descendant of 
the early Pilgrims" could not, and, we are bound to say, does 
not seem to have tried to, repress the inherited and inherent fana- 
ticism which seems to be interwoven with the heart-strings of New 
England. Before he was appointed, he wrote an essay for the 
London Times on the Constitution, of which it was justly said by 
an able critic : " That its melodramatic style prevails widely in 
the American press, and is well adapted to the condition to 
which it has reduced the American mind ; showing, as it does, 

how words maybe made effective in clouding the mind, and how 

* 

* London Record, Februarj- 3 : In curious contrast with this harangue are 
Mr. Weed's palinodes of 1863. " If," said he, " the North rejected abolition as 
a merely political test, will it be accepted now, when the lives of our sons and 
brothers, and the preservation of the country are involved ! We ask this ques. 
tion now in view of the concerted effort to narrow this mighty struggle for 
national existence down to an abolition crusade." 



39 

sentiments may'be boldly set side by side with facts which utterly 
belie them."* Though startled by this, we were not prepared 
for such revelations of puerility and what we are tempted to 
call 'snobbishness' disclosed in the half-dozen despatches from 
Vienna which Mr. Seward has cruelly given to the world. We 
have neither room nor patience to consider them in detail, but 
beg the reader, who may, naturally enough, in view of Mr. 
Motley's reputation, doubt the severe justice of our judgment, 
to examine for himself the despatch of November, 1861, nar- 
rating his reception by the Emperor, and the concluding one of 
October, 1862, in which, with a poor garniture of familiar quo- 
tations, and a dismal continuity of platitudes, he discusses the 
position and character of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
with whom, one would think, the Minister to Austria has no more 
concern than with the Rajah of Sarawak, and to whose speech at 
Manchester he applies the gentle and gentlemanly criticism : 
" Blistered be the tongue that speaks of shame is the only and 
fit response to such rhetoric and such prophecy as Mr. Glad- 
stone's." 

Why, wuth such antecedents, and circumstances, Mr. Motley 
was selected to go to London to help Mr. Adams would be a 
puzzle but for his assertion of his own fitness for the work. He 
is the "Mr. Lofty" of this diplomatic comedy. " I told Count 
Rechberg that I had recently had a very long and full conversa- 
tion with Lord John Russell, &c." " I told him I had received 
similar assurances from other members of the English cabinet, 
&c." " He asked me what I thought of the attitude of France, 
and I told him that M. Thouvenel had assured me, &c. ;" and 
at last he winds up with a passage which we reproduce, as being 
as concentrated a specimen of egotism and official indiscretion 
as this volume contains. 

" One thing is very certain. The Government here will be 
" very much influenced by the course of policy pursued towards 
*' the United States by the British and French governments ; 
" and I am therefore glad that, in pursuance of your instruc- 



* The Constitution and Mr. Motley, by Rowland E. Evans Esq., of the 
Philadelphia Bar. Philadelphia, 1861. 



40 

" tions, I passed some time before coming to my post informing 
" myself at the fountain heads, in Enghand and France, of the 
" probable nature of that policy. I am constantly questioned 
" on the subject by all with whom I come in contact. Should 
" a tory government succeed the present cabinet in England, I 
" anticipate much trouble. Nothing can exceed the virulence 
" with which the extreme conservative party regard us, nor the 
" delight with which they look forward to our extinction as a 
" nation. They consider such a consummation of our civil war 
" as the most triumphant answer which could be made to their 
" own reform party. The hatred to the English radicals is the 
" secret of the ferocity and brutality with which the Times, the 
" Saturday Review, and other tory organs of the press have 
" poured out their insults upon America- ever since the war 
" began. In the present administration and its supporters, I 
" know we have many warm friends, warmer in their senti- 
" ments towards us, than it would be safe for them, in the pre- 
" sent state of parties, to avow." 

What, we may diffidently ask, will be thought of the propriety 
and expediency of publishing such a despatch as this, if, by any 
political accident. Lord Derby and " the extreme conservative 
party" should come into power? 

Whether Mr. Motley did bring to Mr. Adams' aid his familiar 
acquaintance with the leaders of British politics, does not ap- 
pear very clearly, but whether he did or not, no result was at- 
tained. The aggregated influence of prelates and politicians in 
London availed naught. The ministry refused to recede a hair's 
breadth from their recognition of the belligerent rights of 
the South. The Alabama and Oreto, and that unadjudicated 
craft, the Bermuda, sailed from Liverpool, destined for des- 
tructive war on Northern commerce. Strict port discipline 
watched the Tuscarora at Southampton, and a British frigate 
literally convoyed the Nashville to sea. The poor little 
Saginaw was ordered away from Hong Kong.* The Emily 

* la April last, Mr. Seward wrote to Mr. Adams as to the " Chinese" Rebel- 
lion, a special despatch, which it would be unfair to suppress or mutilate. Its 
oddity, in view of everything at home and abroad, is superlative. "The re- 



41 

St. Pierre was not given up. The Bull Dog (p. 228) carried 
"one Pegram and seven other persons" to officer "290." In 
short, at the end of Mr. Seward's year, the curtain dropped 
on a scene of impotent diplomacy, which all his rhetoric cannot 
disguise. Mediation or intervention never was dreamed of in 
England; and the belligerent recognition, for the withdrawal 
of which there was so much fruitless urgency, remains in as full 
force as on the day it was announced. " How far," said Mr. 
Adams, in one of his latest letters, "the question of a recogni- 
tion of the insurgents will enter into the deliberation (of Parlia- 
ment), I will not venture to predict. My opinion is that that 
event now depends almost entirely on the fortune of the war. 
If we prove ourselves, hy February next, no more able to con- 
trol its results than we are at this moment, it will be difficult for 
ministers longer to resist the current of sentiment leading in that 
direction in both Houses of Parliament. Even the unpleasant 
alternative of appearing to uphold slavery against the action of 
the Government will be acquiesced in as an overruling necessity, 
dictated by the popular opinion. I feel it my duty to say this 

ports we receive from China show that the insurrection there is becoming very 
formidable, and they leave it doubtful whether the British and French forces 
now in China are adequate to secure the inviolability of the persons and pro- 
perty of the subjects and citizens of the western powers dwelling in the com- 
mercial cities of that Empire. It is a matter of deep regret to us that our trou- 
bles at home render it hazardous to withdraw a part of our great land and na- 
val forces from operating here, and send them to China to co-operate with the 
forces of the allies there. As you are well aware, the continuance of the in- 
surrection in the United States is due to the attitudes of Great Britain and 
France towards our country. It would seem to be desirable for those two states 
to have our co-operation in China in preserving a commerce of vast importance 
to them as well as to ourselves. That co-operation we could give if we were 
relieved from the necessity for maintaining a blockade and seige of the Southern 
ports. Moreover, the question may be well asked, where is this tendency to 
insurrection, which Great Britain and France seem to us to be practically, al- 
though unintentionally, fostering, to end ? It breaks out in the Levant ; it grows 
flagrant on the China coasts ; it even lifts up its head in France. Is it not the 
interest of all great maritime states to repress or at least to discourage it ? The 
President does not expect you to make any special or formal suggestion of these 
views to the British Government, but it seems to him you may properly use 
them, incidentally, with advantage to your intercourse with the British Govern- 
ment and British society." 



42 

much, in order to prevent the smallest misconception of the ex- 
isting state of things, on this side, in the minds of the Govern- 
ment at home." 

If to be forcAvarned is to he forearmed, then, in the beffinnins: 
of November, when this ominous despatch reached America, vras 
the administration at Washington clad in proof; yet on the 
10th of the same month, General McClellan was removed from 
his command and banished to the mild sympathies of New York 
and Boston, and the chapter of disaster opened, which seems 
to have closed, in bloody disappointment, on the heights of 
Fredericksburg, at Vicksburg, and in the doubtful struggle at 
Murfreesborough. 

Turning to Mr. Seward's diplomacy in Paris, let us briefly 
and candidly state its course and its fruits. As tending to 
something like a result at the moment these lines are written, 
they are very important. In it, one thing is very manifest, 
that Mr. Dayton never enjoyed the same confidential and cordial 
relations to the Government at home as did Mr. Adams, or Mr. 
Motley, or even Mr. Pike, of the Tribune ; and this, for no other 
apparent reason than, that a year ago, in the matter of the sur- 
render of privateering, Mr. Dayton had proved not only that 
he had a will of his own, but that, when he yielded it to positive 
orders, he was right and the Government wrong.* There can 



* The threat which, in July, 1862, was made towards England, in February 
1863, is about to be aimed somewhere else. On the 17th instant, as these sheets 
are passing through the press, the Senate Bill authorizing privateers was dug 
from its forgotten grave and animated. It was passed in spite of the opposition 
of the Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Afifairs. No comment is needed 
on the following proceedings : 

"Mr. McDodgall said he especially wanted this bill passed, for he believed 
that before Congress met again, we should be at war with a foreign power, and 
should need all our force on sea and land. 

" Mr. Sumner offered an amendment confining the operation of the bill to the 
suppression of the rebellion. He argued that we should not put anything in 
the bill lilje a menace. When we were engaged in a foreign war, then would 
be time enough to meet that question. 

" Mr. McDougall aslved the Senator, as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations, if we were not now threatened with foreign complications. 

"Mr. Sumner said he had no information that was not open to the Senate. 

" Mr. McDougall believed that before the meeting of another Congress we 



43 

hardly be conceived a position of greater embarrassment for an 
intelligent, patriotic and liigh spirited man, than that of Mr. 
Dayton, during the anxious and busy year just ended. Accre- 
dited to a court whose master prides himself on his demeanour 
of reserve, if not his policy of subtlety ; opposed by what, abroad, 
is a vast power, social sympathy and antipathy ; confronted by 
an able, astute, and, in his line of diplomacy, accomplished ad- 
versary ; unfamiliar with the language of the refined and arti- 
ficial society in which he was plunged; Mr. Dayton had, at least, 
a right to a thorough and cordial support at home, and to some- 
thing more than a chilling and formal endorsement of his con- 
duct. Mr. Seward was never wearied of sending honied com- 
pliments to Mr. Adams as to his ability, his sagacity, his dis- 
cretion, his "far-reaching grasp" (p. 201). To his colleague 
in France he was far more sparing. 

But Mr. Dayton laboured under another disadvantage which 
was radical. Representing a jealous, suspicious, irritable Gov- 
ernment, impregnated thoroughly with the one idea of unity at 
any cost, and coercion to an illimitable extent — a Government 
which, whether right or wrong at the beginning, has learned 
nothing and forgotten nothing, and resents any difierent view 
of the circumstances which surround it, it was difficult, if not 
impossible, especially with the meagre information furnished 
him, to rise to the appreciation of fair play and really friendly 



should be involved in a foreign war, and he wanted to have the country pre- 
pared. 

"The amendment of Mr. Sumner was rejected — yeas 13, nays 22. 

" Mr. Sumner offered an amendment as a substitute, reviving the acts of 1812 
and 1813, concerning the letters of marque, and applying them to that portion 
of the United States in insurrection. Rejected. 

"Mr. Sumner offered another amendment, as a substitute, authorizing the 
Secretary of the Navy to hire any vessels needed for the national service, put- 
ting them in charge of officers commissioned by the United States, and giving 
them the character of national ships. Rejected — yeas 8, nays 28. 

" Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, offered a substitute, authorizing the President to 
pay any vessel regularly put into commission three times the value of any ship 
or ships captured belonging to the States now in insurrection. Rejected." 

The bill was then passed — yeas 27, nays 9 — no Democratic Senator voting. 



44 

feeling on the part of the Government to which he was ac- 
credited. Yet such has been the conduct and temper — as the 
impartial world admits — of the French government from first 
to last — from the time when, long ago, M. Thouvenel, whom Mr. 
Dayton says was a friend, and Avhose displacement he regretted 
— gently hinted the possibility of the war becoming protracted 
and bloody, down to the last offer of friendly intervention, 
pendente lite, within the present month. This steady and con- 
siderate friendliness was disturbed by no hostile act — no depar- 
ture from practical neutrality. No armed vessels left the ports 
of France — no contraband commodities were shipped thence. 
The indiscretions here, such as the ostentatious enlistment of 
the Orleans princes in the Federal army, or the welcome to the 
Conde de Reus after he had broken away from the French co- 
operation in Mexico, seemed to make no impression on the 
really friendly sentiment in France.* History has well settled 
the question, once agitated, of the good faith of the Bourbon 
dynasty to us in our time of early trouble. It must, we think, 
pronounce the same judgment on the doings of the dynasty of 
their imperial successor. 

But Mr. Seward's Minister in Paris was not allowed to see 
this, or to act as if he even dreamed of it. The only really 
cordial and friendly despatch ever sent is one, suppressed in 
this collection, written in February, 1862, on the subject of Court 

* The treatment of the Orleans young gentlemen seems to have attracted ad- 
verse criticism in France. Some time between the 13th and 23d of June, Mr. 
Dayton wrote a confidential despatch, (No. 164,) which is suppressed in this 
volume, but the answer shows to what it related. " The President appreciates 
the vigilance and the prudence which suggested your confidential despatch. 
It may be enough to say, in reply, that the Comte de Paris and the Due de 
Chartres, after a year's service in the army of the United States, in which they 
have conducted themselves with the utmost propriety and the highest gallantry, 
have returned to Europe. It is not to be doubted that they carry with them 
the affectionate gratitude of the American people. This, however, is a senti- 
ment won by them, not for themselves alone, or even peculiarly, but, as in the 
case of Lafayette and Rochambeau, it is a sentiment won by them for France." 
The analogy to Lafayette is not happy. The first battle in which he served on 
this soil was a defeat, not comparable in its bloodliness to some we have en- 
countered, but still an appalling defeat. He did 7iot return to France in the 
hour of disaster. 



45 

presentations at the Tuileries, in ■which, after saying that 
"it is peculiarly uncomfortable at the present moment to find 
American citizens leaving their country — a prey to factions 
and civil war — disturbing the Court of a friendly power 
and embarrassing our representative there with questions of 
personal interest and pretension; Mr. Seward adds quite 
sensibly, though with a stateliness of which he rarely divests 
himself, and at which, in connexion with the trivial topic of 
discussion, it is hardly possible not to smile : 

" Let the Emperor and Empress of France receive when they 
" will, and as many or few as they will, and let all others, as 
" well as those who are admitted, turn their attention to the 
" question how they can serve their country abroad ; and if 
" they find no better way to do it than by making their attend- 
" ance in the saloons of the Tuileries, let them return home to 
" a country that now, for the first time, and not for a long time, 
" needs the active efforts of every one of its loyal children to 
" save itself from destruction. Finally, above all things, have 
" no question with the Government of France on this sub- 
" ject. Rather introduce nobody, hoAvever justly distinguished, 
" than let a question of fashion or ceremony appear in the 
" records of the important period in which we are acting 
" for the highest interests of our country and of humanity." 

No word of cordiality comparable to this, is to be found any- 
where else. Mr. Dayton's situation was a difiicult one, and 
Mr. Seward did nothino; to render it less so. Sometimes he is 
— at least, so it seems to us, looking at these despatches in 
print — almost insulting, as, for instance, when, in March of last 
year, in answer to one in which Mr. Dayton felicitated himself 
on accidentally hearing the views of the administration " from 
the newspapers," the Secretary sends some meagre military 
news as to the operations against New Orleans, prefacing it 
with the conjecture : " I suppose I hazard nothing of imhlicity 
here by informing you that General Butler, with an adequate 
land force, and Captain Porter, with a fleet, are already in 
motion to secure and hold New Orleans." It was about the 
same time that Mr. Dayton wrote about the cotton supply, and 
said : "Do not delay action, I beg of you, a day beyond the 



46 

.'stme when you can act on this subject with propriety," and the 
answer was a cokl, unsatisfactory one of eight lines, in sharp 
contrast with the pages the Secretary was writing to Mr. 
Adams, and Pike, and Cameron. Well might Mr. Dayton say, 
in reply, " I was a little surprised by the vague and general 
terms in which you expressed your intentions, and felt that the 
Government here would -not consider them as explicit and satis- 
factory as those heretofore used." To this, or other despatches 
like this, the answer is stern and repulsive. " To bring the 
Emperor to this conviction is your present urgent duty. If 
successful in performing it, you will render a benefit to France 
worth more than any conquest, while you will direct a stream of 
healing oil upon the wounds of our afflicted land." To be thus 
reminded of one's duty, when conscious of performing it, is any- 
thing but agreeable. 

In August, Mr. Dayton's sufferings became intolerable, and 
compelled him to send a despatch to Washington which tells its 
tale of suffering and injustice with an emphasis that, if anything 
could, must have made an impression : — 

" It would seem to me that you must have some information, 
" beyond what I receive here, as to the views of France, from 
" her minister at Washington. If so, may I beg that you will 
" communicate it ? I am sure that I need not say that I ask 
" this information from no idle curiosity, but as something es- 
" sential to a useful discharge of my duties here. Nothing can 
" be more embarrassing than being in the dark upon matters 
" which may have transjsired between yourself and the French 
" minister at Washington. As an illustration of this, the only 
" knowledge I had of the actual purpose of Mr. Mercier's re- 
" cent visit to Richmond was obtained first from Lord Cowley, 
" the British ambassador, and next, at second hand, from the 
" Emperor. You will, under these circumstances, appreciate 
" at once ray embarrassments in falling into conversation with 
" Lord Cowley on this subject. I make this reference, not at 
" all as matter of complaint, but only as an illustration of my 
" meaning, when I allude to embarrassments arising from a 
" want of knowledge of what may have transpired, if anything, 
" between yourself and Mr. Mercier. I know and fully appre- 



47 

" ciate the vast extent of your labors, and it may well be that 
" nothing has recently been communicated by the French gov- 
*' ernment. If so, I beg that you will excuse me for directing 
" your attention to the subject." 

This was in August, and Mr. Mercier's visit to Richmond 
was in April ; and though Mr. Dayton had been duly informed 
of his having gone, no word was ever sent to him as to Avhy he 
had gone, or what was the result of his visit. Mr. Mercier, as 
we now know, wrote all about it to his government instantly on 
his return. Mr. Seward never told his representative abroad 
anything, till he supplicated for some information, and if he did 
afterwards, it is suppressed in this publication. 

And why, let us here pause and ask, why this mystification 
on our side as to Mr. Mercier's visit to Richmond when there 
was none on the other — why was Mr. Dayton thus kept in the 
dark while the French Minister of Foreign Affairs was thor- 
oughly well informed, and when the only thing the outside world 
knew was, that the instant the Gassendi brought the mysterious 
wayfarer back, the President and Mr. Seward rushed to the 
Navy Yard to greet her and find out all they could ?* These 
questions are more easily answered now than they could have 
been a fortnight ago before copies of the "Livre Jaune" reached 
this country. 

The truth we take to be that, among Mr. Seward's virtues, is 
not silence. He talks, we imagine, as fluently as he writes, 
and probably with no greater precision. If Mr. Wendell 
Phillips is to be credited, and on matters of fact, we know no 
reason that he should not be, Mr. Seward, before his accession 
to office, talked Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of State into a sort 
of confidence, that he was, and meant to be, a conservative and 
Constitution-respecting man, and yet it is to be doubted if he 
remembers anything about it now. So, we imagine, with Mr. 
Mercier, for on no other principle can we account for the pal- 

* la curious and impressive contrast with this almost boisterous welcome, 
was the austere reserve of the Confederate Executive to Mr. Mercier. " N'ayant 
pas cru devoir deraander d voir le Pr6sident Davis, il ne m'a ^tc fait, a ce sujet, 
aucune insinuation, non plus que le moindrc effort pour donner a ma presence 
une autre signification que celle qu'elle avoit reellement." 



48 



pable difference of recollection between the two witnesses who 
have recently been upon the stand, and whose testimony, in no 
uncharitable spirit, we parallelize : 

Mr. Mercier to Mr. Thouvenel, April Mr. Seward to the President, February 

I3ih, 1862. 9lh, 1863. 

" Mr. Seward told me that I might " No suggestions were made to M. 

add, if I found an opportune occasion, Mercier, by the Secretary of State, that 

that according to his convictions, the induced or were designed or calculated 



North was animated by no spirit of re- 
venge, and that, for himself, he would 
be most happy to find himself again in 
the Senate with all those the South 
might choose to send tiiere. 

" I undertook this journey (to Rich- 



to induce him to undertake a mission 
to Richmond in April last, or at any 
other time. He was not then, nor has 
he or any other person ever been au- 
thorized by this Government or by the 
Secretary of State to make any repre- 



mond) with the explicit acquiescence sentations of any kind or on any sub- 
of the Secretary of State, and, as it ject to the insurrectionary agents or so- 
seemed to me, according to his de- called authorities at Richmond, or to 
sire." hold any communication with them on 

behalf of this Government." 

"Since the 4th of March, 1861, no 
communication, direct or indirect, for- 
mal or informal, has been had by this 
Government or by the Secretary of 
State with the insurgents, their aiders 
or abettors." 

■!«■ * * • * * * 

" Passports were granted at the re- 
quest of those distinguished persons 
respectively, and not on any sugges- 
tion of the Government or Secretary of 
State. They severally travelled in a 
private and unofficial capacity. They 
bore no communication, whether for- 
mal or informal, verbal or written, from 
this Government or from the Secretary 
of State to any of the insurgents, and 
they brought none from any such per- 
sons to this Government or to the Sec- 
retary of State." 

We cannot but think that the suppressed passages of Mr. 
Seward's despatch, of the 23d of August, in answer to Mr. 
Dayton's supplication for light as to Mr. Mercier's visit to 
Richmond might illustrate this problem, and give us Mr. 
Seward's version of his interviews, Avritten at a time when the 
radical opposition of his own party was not threatening him ; 



49 

and Lord Lyons must know what Mr. Mercior told him at the 
time of the conferences. 

But let us hasten on to the closing scene of this busy year as 
it is revealed, not only in these papers, but in those which have 
been more recently given to the world on both sides of the 
Atlantic. It is full of interest. 

The clouds began to gather in France as early as October, 
when M. Thouvenel was susperseded, and M. Drouyn de Lhuys 
came into office. Mr. Dayton saw the significance of this. " We 
lose a friend," said he, "at an important point," and one cannot 
but smile at the meagre consolation that he finds, in the fact 
artlessly and honestly stated, that (speaking of M. Drouyn de 
Lhuys) "his perfect knowledge of our language will, to a cer- 
tain extent, facilitate our official intercourse." The President's 
proclamation reached Paris soon after, accompanied by a most 
remarkable minatory despatch from Mr. Seward, and was com- 
municated to the Minister of Foreign Aifairs, who simply said, 
that " ours was a great question, and that he should endeavour 
to study it as soon as possible." This was on the 21st of 
October ; and, in nine days from that date, having, it is to be 
supposed, mastered "the great question," M. Drouyn de Lhuys 
wrote his despatch to the English and Russian cabinets, asking 
them to unite in an offer of friendly introduction with a view to 
an armistice. This important step does not appear to have 
been known to Mr. Dayton till after the 6th, for, on that day, 
he sends an account of a conference he had had with the French 
Minister, who told him " that everything remained as it had 
done for some time past. That Ffance, in common with the 
other powers of Europe, very much regretted the war and its 
continuance, but that they had no purpose to intervene or 
interfere in any way." How far this is consistent with per- 
fect candour, or how far a public man is bound to reveal to 
a party in interest, the fact of the mere initiation of a corres- 
pondence is a question we do not feel competent to decide. Mr. 
Seward, anxious enough to find ground of censure, does not 
seem to have found fault with it, but puts his complaint on what 
seems to us, and will seem to Europe, the strange ground, that 
the action of the Great Powers " was a conference" — " an 
4 



50 

inconclusive conference" lie calls it — to "R'hicli the United States 
should have been invited. 

But Mr. Seward and the Cabinet at "Washington found it 
easier and safer to condemn their own Minister than to resent 
anything that France might do ; and, accordingly, the papers 
recently volunteered to the public and which, by-the-by, were 
not given, until the contents of the "Livre Jaune" reached this 
country and rendered our ' Premier's' tenure of office and 
influence precarious — these papers reveal an act of injustice to 
a distant and patriotic public servant, which it is due to com- 
mon fair play to expose and condemn. If Mr. Dayton were 
within reach, it looks as if Mr. Holt and the Government 
detectives might be directed against him, and, as if the Admin- 
istration were glad of a chance to rebuke him for his refractori- 
ness a year ago on the private war question ; or to verify the 
threat which has been attributed to Mr. Lincoln, that, as New 
Jersey had never done anything for him, he would take the 
first chance to punish New Jersey. 

What is Mr. Dayton's offence, that called for Secretary Se- 
ward's rebuke ? On the 6th of November, as we have seen, he 
knew nothing of the Armistice proposition. He did know of it, 
however, before the 16th, for, on that day, he wrote a remon- 
strance — earnest, respectful, confident, though ineffectual re- 
monstrance — directed mainly to convince the French minister 
that he was mistaken in supposing that there was, or ever had 
been, an equality of strength between the contending forces 
here, or that, " after so much bloodshed, they are now in the 
same position as at first." There was but one phrase in this 
letter, which, by possibility, could give offence at Washington. 
It was that in which Mr. Dayton did some sort of justice to 
the valour of the confederates. "In Virginia," said he, "the 
insurgents have advanced and retreated. They have gained 
battles and have lost them. I do not mean to depreciate their 
gallantry; tliey are yet my countrymen, and here, at least, 
they have shown equality of strength." 

When this despatch reached the State Department, we were 
on the eve of the hideous sacrifice at Fredericksburg, when 
the Administration knew they were pursuing a course which 
involved terrible hazard, and when it was "treasonable" to 



51 

admit even to themselves, that, in Virginia, there had been, 
and might be, again "equality of strength."* The Pre- 
sidential orders had been issued to make the bloody experi- 
ment against the frowning batteries -vyhich overlooked the 
Rappahannock. The Cabinet was anxious and irritable. Mr. 
Dayton had written a despatch on the 10th of November, which 
has not been printed, and which contained evidently some exas- 
perating hint, or some annoying inquiry as to what had been 
said to Mr. Mercier, or what Mr. Mercier had been authorized 
to say. It was a subject on which Mr. Seward was nervous, 
and he writes : — 

" In reply to a suggestion in your despatch, it is proper for 
' me to say that neither M. Mercier nor any other person has 
' had the least warrant from any authority of the United States 
' for representing to his Government that the President would 
' be disposed to entertain any proposition in regard to the 
' action of this Government in the conduct of our domestic 
' affairs from n^nj foreign quarter whatsoever. The exact con- 
' trary is, in effect, all that has ever passed between all the 
' ministers residing here and this department. You will judge 
' whether it is important to clear up this point at Paris." 

On, or immediately before the 5th of December, Mr. Dayton's 
remonstrance and argument against the French project arrived, 
and Mr. Seward, as if angry that anybody but himself should 
argue, or prophecy, or " discourse,"t sends a despatch to Mr. 
Dayton, the import of which cannot be mistaken : — 

Department of State, ") 
Washington, Dec. 5th, 1862. / 
Sir : Your despatch of Nov. 18, No. 227, has been received. 
Having already indicated the course which the President has 
decided to adopt concerning the late proceedings of the French 



■* As to Fredericksburg, there is in General Hooker's testimony before the 
Senate Committee the following inexplicable passage: "It was just dark. 
Finding I had lost as many men as my orders required me to lose, I suspended 
the attack." — Senate Document No. 71, page 25. 

f " I do not discourse to-day upon the military position." — Mr. Seward to Mr, 
Adams, page 379. 



52 

government, it is not necessary now for me to review the note 
which, in the absence of instructions, you have written to M. 
Drouyn de Lhuys. 

I am sir, your obedient servant, 

Wm. H. Seward. 

And, on the 11th, he repeats this reprimand, showing that, 
had the French answer been other than it was, the language of 
rebuke would have been still stronger : — 

" From my previous despatches you will probably have in- 
" ferred that the President did not expect you to open a corres- 
" pondence with M. Drouyn de Lhuys upon the subject of the 
" proposition concerning American affairs, which the Emperor 
" has recently submitted to the Emperor of Russia and the 
" Queen of Great Britain. Insomuch as you have done so 
'' without consulting this government, and have thus drawn forth 
" from the imperial government a frank and friendly answer, it 
" is only proper that you should noAv inform M. Drouyn de 
." Lhuys that his note has been submitted to the President, and 
" that he is gratified with the explanations it gives of the 
" present policy of the Emperor in regard to the United States." 

With Mr. Dayton's manly and earnest reply, which shows 
how deeply he felt the wrong that had been done, this chapter 
of mismanaged statesmanship may be said to close: — 

" Paris, December 23, 1862. 
" Sir : Your despatch of December 5, No. 265, is received. 
" You simply acknowledge the receipt of my despatch of 
" November 18, No. 227, and say that, ' having already indi- 
" cated the course which the President has decided to adopt 
" concerning the late proceedings of the French government, it 
" is unnecessary for me to review the note, which, in the 
" absence of instructions, you (I) have written to M. Drouyn 
" de Lhuys.' I had supposed that that note, as it did not 
" assume to indicate any policy, but merely to sum up briefly 
" the successes of our army and the governmental resources, in 
" hopes of its having weight in any future deliberation of this 
" government, could not fail at least to meet the approbation of 
" the department. My general instructions in reference to the 
" subject-matter were most ample, and I had held verbal con- 



53 

" ference with M. Drouyn de Lhuys on the subject before. He 
" tokl me what he had done ; and I could answer when, perhaps, 
" the government could not. The emergency, I thought, not 
" only justified, but required, that in view of the possible future, 
" I should put my verbal suggestions in writing. As one useful 
" result, at all events, I have received the important communi- 
" cations of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, of November 23d last, a 
" copy of which accompanied my despatch. No. 231. I may 
" add, also, that I felt that it was but just to myself that my 
" countrymen, as well as the government, should see and know 
" that I had not failed, in the crisis which had occurred, fairly 
" to represent its condition. 

"I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

Wm. L. Dayton." 

Nothing now remains but a sort of postscript of negotiations 
or correspondence, the interest and import of which cannot be 
measured till we have the news of the manner, in which it is re- 
ceived on the other side of the Atlantic ; Mr. Seward's last 
published despatch to Mr. Dayton, of the 6th of February, 
being now on the ocean, having been printed before it was sent 
to its destination. Its issue is quite as momentous as was the 
undecided question of the Trent. 

The reader of these pages must have seen the clear convic- 
tion under which they are written, that the action of the French 
Government from first to last, with perhaps one exception, has 
been candid, entirely ingenuous and friendly. No credit per- 
haps is due for this, for the interest France has in the integrity 
and welfare of the United States, as they once were, is palpa- 
ble. We believe M. Drouyn de Lhuys said the actual truth 
when he wrote : "I assure you that our friendly dispositions 
have not changed. If, some day, the Americans, tired of turn- 
ing their valor against themselves, should wish to have recourse 
to us, in order to seek, in concert, the means of terminating 
this conflict they would find us always ready, associated with 
other powers or separately, to aid them with our co-operation, 
and to testify by our good oflBces, the feelings which have not 
ceased to animate France in regard to them." But it is also 
apparent, that the Lincoln Government, as represented and 
controlled by Mr. Seward, never thought so, or if they did, 



64 

have never been able so far to reconcile it ■with their poor no- 
tions of policy and their craven fears of the radical element, as to 
be willing to say so. 

It is impossible to regard the decision on the last French 
proposition of a negotiation, pending hostilities, in any other 
light, or to think of it, without a just solicitude as to the pos- 
sible consequences of a refusal to listen to the voice of friendly 
counsel, its object being peace — peace among brethren, "for 
such," says Mr. Dayton, "we yet are," peace in an agonized 
and bloodstained land — peace with the chances of seeing a 
restoration on this continent, of great commonwealths, which 
may raise the American name and prowess from the abyss in 
which they have now sunk. One of two consequences, it re- 
quires no skill of prophesy to know, must follow — that France 
(and with it the other great powers,) wearied of the material 
sacrifices they have been making, and angered at the obduracy 
with which all intercession is rejected, may recognize the 
Southern Confederacy, and give it the vast moral support which 
mere recognition will confer — or that, weariness and disgust 
taking another course, they may leave us to the arbitrament 
which we have chosen, and which no human power, no course of 
events, no success, no disappointment, induces us to relinquish. 

Why, but for motives purely personal and having reference 
to the microcosm of small politics, in which he has always 
moved, Mr. Seward should have rudely refused to listen to the 
counsel, for it was nothing more, and not intervention nor me- 
diation, of the French Government, it is difficult to understand. 
One may imagine, indeed, how it might have been turned to the 
prejudice of the Confederates, if they had declined to accede to 
it. It is difficult to see any reason for our refusing it. Still 
it has been refused, and we must abide the issue, as we did that 
of the Trent retraction, with deep solicitude, and, as Mr. Sew- 
ard hopes, no doubt, with a readiness, should no evil result fol- 
low, to claim it as a new diplomatic triumph. 

Were it not a subject so full of gravity in every respect it 
would not be unprofitable, before the judgment of what Mr. 
Seward somewhere, in truly Chinese style, calls " the outside 
world," is known, to look at it critically, for the conduct of the 
whole afi'air is very characteristic. Mr. Dayton communicated 



55 

the fact that the Emperor meant to offer his friendly counsel, in 
a note, made very laconic by his sense of recent injury. The 
counsel was offered on the 3d of the present month, in language, 
the friendly, deferential tone of which could not be surpassed. 
Commissioners were to be named, privately and informally, if 
need be. They were to meet — that is, if both belligerents agreed, 
and if they did not, the advantage enured to the one who did, 
and, in the language of the French despatch, which to our ears, 
sounds like the accents of a kind and anxious friend : 

" In place of the accusations which North and South mutu- 
" ally cast upon each other at this time, would be substituted an 
" argumentative discussion of the interests which divide them. 
" They would seek out, by means of well-ordered and profound 
" deliberations, whether these interests are definitively irrecon- 
" cileable, whether separation is an extreme which can no longer 
" be avoided, or whether the memories of common existence, 
" whether the ties of any kind which have made of the North 
" and of the South one sole and whole federative state, and 
" have borne them on to so high a degree of prosperity, are not 
" more powerful than the causes which have placed arms in the 
" hands of the two populations." 

To this counsel, in three days, Mr. Seward sent his answer 
of denial. It is but fair to say that his attitude, relatively to 
his own party just now, is not favourable to repose, or delibera- 
tion, or conciliatory action. The temptation to be exacting and 
repellant, and denunciatory is very great at this moment. It 
has not been resisted. The answer is dated on the 6th, and 
was, as we have said, instantly published. It has all the marked 
peculiarities of Mr. Seward's rhetoric. No one else on the 
roll of statesmen, or of such as claim to be statesmen, would ven- 
ture at this moment of anxious suspense to say, as he does, that 
the Federal Government now holds half of North Carolina and 
Mississippi, and one-third of South Carolina !* No one but 

* The official paper at Washington, which prints " from the original in the 
State Department," makes, on this extraordinary statement, the following just 
comment: " Accustomed as we have been to the complaints of factious poli- 
ticians, this brief retrospect of our Army and Navy will only surprise the 
American people less than the great Power for whose benefit it is made." — 
Chronicle, February 14th, 1862. 



56 

Mr. Seward would insinuate to a courteous correspondent that 
he had, to use his peculiar words, "taken other light" to guide 
his footsteps than such as was radiated from his Department, or 
would, all things considered, be surprised if he had. No one 
else would have described the people of this country " as a 
Peace Democracy." No one but Mr. Seward would venture to 
say, and hope to be believed, " that our credit is adequate to 
the existing emergency," or would at this time of day, revive 
the cant of ' loyal men in the South' represented in Congress, the 
representatives being refugees elected by military authority, — 
and, least of all, no one, we are very sure, but Mr. Seward, 
would meet the the practical, and if not practical, perfectly in- 
telligible, suggestion of a commission on neutral ground, with 
what we can construe in no other way than the poor sarcasm of 
saying that the Congress of the United States is the proper 
" forum for debates between alienated parties," whose "vacant 
seats are inviting back the Senators and Representatives of the 
discontented." Whether the force and point of this sarcasm 
will be appreciated by the Imperial councils, we do not pretend 
to conjecture. Mr. Dayton, in one of his moments of despon- 
dency last summer, well said : " At a court where there is a 
power — a tldnking^ acting -power — behind the ministry, we can 
never feel quite sure of our position ; and it is on the decision 
of that power, when he shall have received Mr. Seward's re- 
buke, that more depends than can be easily measured. As we 
have said, action and inaction are alike portentous. 

The deep interest of these later revelations has led us away 
from the immediate subject of review, and having exhausted our 
space, we shall not recur to it. Attention has been naturally 
directed to Mr. Seward's "diplomacy" with the two leading 
foreign powers, but there is a vast fund beside, on Avhich we have 
not drawn. The correspondence with Russia, whence Mr. Clay 
wrote (and Mr. Seward prints) that " money and men should be 
sent into Ireland, India, and all the British dominions, all over 
the world, to stir up revolt ; for our cause is just, and vengeance 
will sooner or later overtake that perfidious aristocracy ;" and 
Mr. Cameron informed the government that " the fountains of 
Peterhoff were set in operation and a sumptuous dinner pro- 
vided" for his benefit; and Prince Gortachow told Mr. Taylor, 
as late as October : " Your situation is getting worse and worse. 



m 

The chances of preserving the Union are growing more and more 
desperate. Can nothing be done to stop this dreadful war ?" — is 
very suggestive. So is that witli Spain, and Mexico, wliere Mr. 
Corwin amused himself with making treaties which were rejected, 
and the Mexicans, on the faith of them, drawing bills which were 
protested ; and Prussia, and Holland, and Japan, and China — 
and the Central^American States, who rose as one man against 
Mr. Lincoln's negro deportation scheme, and, as our ministers 
said, "regarded it as the greatest degradation for the country 
to be overrun with blacks" (p. 891,) or "to be visited by a 
plague of which the United States desired to rid themselves." 
(p. 900.) Morocco, where a consul with a guard of Moors 
captured an officer of the Sumter, and a Southern traveller, and 
sent them home in irons, to be discharged or exchanged as prison- 
ers of war, is a curious chapter ; and most curious and discreditable 
of all is that of Brazil, where Mr. Webb insisted on making, at his 
reception, " a longer speech'' than his predecessor, and whose 
style of writing to his Government and mode of diplomatic ac- 
tion, may be judged of by the following passage from one of his 
despatches to Mr* Seward : 

" Robert G. Smith, our late consul, was an open-mouthed 
" traitor and a loud talker. He said, on different occasions, 
" ' Meade is the greatest traitor of the two, and if he ever gets 
*' back to Virginia, it will be in consequence of his disguising 
" himself.' He said he dared not show himself in New York or 
" any Northern State ; and finally left here with his wife, who 
" is from Maine, in an English ship for Liverpool. My im- 
" pression is, that he has sailed for Quebec under a feigned 
" name, and if at the North, he is doubtless somewhere in the 
" vicinity of his wife's relations. It is fortunate for him that 
" he is not here, as he would unquestionably find himself a pas- 
" senger on board a coffee ship bound for New York, and under 
" command of a loyal shipmaster, as there would be no difficulty 
" in sending the traitors home without coming in collision with 
" the Brazilian authorities. Our consul reports that a very 
" decidedly better feeling exists among all Americans here, and 
" that the oath of allegiance is cheerfully taken by nine-tenths 
" of the shipmasters, while even those of rebel proclivities admit 
" its justice, and, after making wry faces, take the oath sooner 



58 

" than be refused their papers. Some of them had sworn 
" roundly that they never would take the oath prescribed ; and 
" it is a mattei" of great exultation and pride with the loyal 
" masters to perceive how thoroughly the blusterers, who boasted 
" of their secession propensities and their secession flags, have 
" been humbled before the authority of the United States Go- 
" vernment exercised in the most quiet way possible." 

This review is closed in a spirit not more cheerful than that 
in which it was begun. If the civil war, in which Providence, 
for our national wrong-doings, has plunged us, had, in its fearful 
processes, evolved one master-spirit — one great man, Soldier or 
Statesman, on whom, as the darkness and the danger grew, the 
hope of the nation might rest, and who should seem to be able 
to lead us out of the labyrinth in which we are condemned to 
wander, there would be a sort of consolation. But mediocrity, 
or less than mediocrity, reigns everywhere. It is the time and 
the scene of shallow — half-educated, light-minded men in exe- 
cutive council. Day after day rolls on, and the hideous mono- 
tony of blood is only varied by revelations of corruption and 
peculation in places high and low — from the gigantic contractors 
of unseaworthy fleets down to the colonel who cheats the Go- 
vernment by forging dead soldiers' names. Fierce fanaticism 
has full sway in the cabinet and out of it. It seems to be the 
only positive principle ; and before it, the Constitution and its 
guarantees have been broken down. For this conquest — for 
this triumph of lawless power over constitutional right — for this 
connivance against knowledge in the imagined exigencies of the 
times to overthrow the law — for the unlawful arrests and cruel 
imprisonments that have been perpetrated and are yet justified 
— for the foreign policy of the Government, which, as we have 
tried to show, has gained nothing and sacrificed everything, 
and, has now brought us back to where we were little more than 
a year ago — a position of anxious dependence on the will of 
strangers — for all this, no one, in our poor judgment, is more re- 
sponsible than the public man whose writings we have endea- 
voured fairly to review ; and who now, unless rumor be utterly 
false, distrusted and proscribed by the radicals of his own party, 
is seeking to be the leader, in conjunction with the kindred 



69 

spirits who have alTvays clustered round him, in a new Pseudo- 
Conservative party, who imagine they can restore to life the 
Union which they have stabbed, and the Constitution they have 
violated. The quotation is trite, but it has an actual truth, 
even in its misapplication : — 

" Non tali auxilio, — nee defensoribus istis 
Tempus eget." 

The Ship of State is among the reefs and breakers, with 
gloom and danger threatening outside. The pilot to weather 
the storm is not among those on deck. The hands that steered 
it into peril cannot be trusted for rescue — the chief mate least 
of all. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



Since the first edition of this pamphlet appeared, the Parlia- 
mentary Papers on American affairs, as well as the ^LivreJaune,' 
have reached this country. They fully confirm the views stated 
in the preceding pages, of the impotent diplomacy of our Fo- 
reign Secretary. They show much more. They show that, 
while no act of wrong or word of unkindness is attributable to 
the French Government or people, every page of Mr. Seward's 
and Earl Russell's correspondence, is disfigured by sternness, if 
not ill nature, on one part, and tame submissiveness on the 
other. The proof of this is abundant, and where positive evi- 
dence is wanting of words of offence being directly communi- 
cated to Mr. Seward, the official and voluntary publication of 
these Parliamentary papers, has now brought them and their 
revelations to his notice, and, if he ever troubles himself about 
such serious things, to that of Mr. Lincoln. It will cost little 
trouble to demonstrate this. 

The negociation between Mr. Seward and the English and 
French ministers, as to an outlet for cotton, is a sad one, because 
it not only proves an apparent want of directness and candor, or 
the absence of influence in the cabinet, but it shows that 
such deficiencies were at once detected, and cautiously guarded 
against. This is summed up in one sentence from Lord Lyons' 
despatch of the 19th December last ; " Mr. Seward observed 
with regard to my first question that neutral property was gua- 
rantied by assurances given over and over again by this Govern- 
ment. To the second question. General Butler's proclamation 
would, he said, be a sufficient answer ; but the case might now 
be altered, for General Banks had probably, by this time, super- 



62 

seded General Butler, and tlie new plan might have been put 
in force. I communicated to Mr. Mercier what Mr. Seward had 
said, and after some consideration we came to the conclusion 
that the only thing which would have any chance of being at- 
tended with a practical result would be to endeavour to obtain 
from Mr. Seward some assurance in writing. On reflection, I 
became convinced that a mere informal declaration from Mr. 
Seward would not be sufficient. I could not feel sure that such a 
document would be held to be binding by all the departments 
of the government. I remembered with regard to the procla- 
mation of General Butler, on which Mr. Seward laid so much 
stress, that at the very moment, at which Mr. Seward had ac- 
cepted from Mr. Stuart compliments on this proclamation, orders 
had, without his knowledge, been issued, which rendered the 
concessions made by it altogether inoperative in practice. I came 
therefore to the conclusion that nothing would be gained unless 
I procured a regular formal document from the whole govern- 
ment." 

This is disparaging enough, but it is not all. 

It is, as has been said, not easy to determine which part 
of the contents of these despatches was communicated to the 
Secretary of State. Some of them, probably were not, but the 
publication is, as lawyers say, notice to all the world, Mr. Se- 
ward included, of what the British Government had been doing, 
and thinking, and writing. When, therefore. Lord Lyons in 
his despatch of the 17th of November, (to which so much absurd 
criticism has lately been directed,) used the language we are 
about to quote, he revealed an inner truth which, now that it is 
authoritatively disclosed, must grate harshly upon the callous 
nerves of the federal administration, one and all. 

"The experience of the past is certainly not calculated to 
inspire any great confidence in the results of these warlike pre- 
parations, but the political interests of the party now in power 
render a continuance of the war a necessity to it. Its only 
chance of regaining its lost popularity lies in successful military 
operations. Unless it can obtain a much higher place in public 
estimation than it now occupies, not only will its tenure become 
extremely precarious, but some of its leading members may be 
called to a severe account for their extra-legal proceedings." 



63 

Lord Lyons vras writing dismal truth. But this is not all. 

As far back as August, 1862, the Charg^ ad interim, Mr. 
Stuart, wrote (and the letter is published !) in relation to the 
passport system : 

" Whatever may be the amount of private dismay and incon- 
venience occasioned by these orders, they have been received by 
the press with the usual approbation given to arbitrary acts dur- 
ing this war." 

Nor is this all. On the 26th of September, Mr. Stuart wrote 
a despatch, (and this is published !) in reference to the execu- 
tive suspension of the Habeas Corpus : 

" It may be said to place the whole nation under martial law. 
Personal liberty will now only exist by military sufferance. 
Your Lordship will observe that there is no law quoted in justi- 
fication of this unprecedented usurpation of power, except that 
of a so-called necessity. The nation has shown itself so little 
jealous of its liberties during the past months, that the procla- 
mation will probably be accepted with submission as an essen- 
tial act of vigor for the successful prosecution of the war." 

Nor is this all. On the 7th of November, after the New 
York election, Mr. Stuart wrote (and this too is published !) — 

" The gains of the Democratic party have been so great that 
they are considered to constitute a political revolution. The 
extreme and unconstitutional policy of the government has no 
doubt been the principal cause of this general change of feelings, 
— either inflicting injury or spreading terror through the coun- 
try, without producing any equivalent success in the conduct of 
the war. * * * I may add that disgust with the war and desire 
for peace has been amongst the principal causes, subordinate 
only to the policy of which they are the effect, of the present 
conservative resurrection."* 

The retention of office by Mr. Seward and his associates, one 
would think, poorly compensates for the humiliation of being thus 
made conscious that, in the judgment of the representatives of 
the nation to which they have surrendered every thing, the effect 
of their policy is 'disgust.' 



* In the Blue Book No. 1, p. 37, is Earl Russell's entire approval of Mr. Stu- 
art's acts and correspondence ; approval of his " temper, discretion and judg- 



ment.' 



64 

On tlie 21st of July 1862, the British Chargd wrote an ac- 
count of a conversation he had had with the Secretary, who was 
in buoyant spirits, his Avonderful elasticity showing itself even 
in the dreary .interval between McClellan's retreat and Pope's 
discomfiture. "It would be" so Mr. Stuart reports Mr. Seward 
to say, " sufficient to have captured the ports and collect cus- 
toms, to hold the Mississippi and the other navigable rivers, and 
to occupy certain strategic points, and that this done, the South- 
ern States might well be left to themselves. Some six or nine 
months would probably be sufficient to bring them to reason." 
■ And then Mr. Stuart adds, as if part of the same executive 
revelation, " Amongst the means relied upon for weakening the 
South, is included a servile war." 

It would be dismal work to turn back to the newspapers of 
last July, then, as still, the organs of the government, and the 
deputy despots of the land, but it may be assumed that no such 
fearful Avhisper as this, of a bloody intention to excite a servile 
revolt in the Southern States, as a mode of depleting them when 
left to themselves, had been given to the American public. Mr. 
Seward, in a despatch of which he was very proud [Despatches, 
1862, pp. 105, 124), had himself deplored servile war " as pro- 
ductive of infinite suffering throughout the world," and yet here 
he was, if Mr. Stuart tells the truth, as we doubt not he does, 
hinting it coolly to a stranger, and that stranger, as was his 
duty, reporting it to his government. Let us see what was the 
reward, — a despatch from Earl Russell to Mr. Stuart, written 
instantly, — but three days elapsing, — on the receipt of this omi- 
nous hint; in which no notice whatever is taken of Mr. Seward's 
prophecies of success. The few words of the despatch are these: 
"Foreign Office, August 7, 1862. 

" Sir : With reference to the paragraph in your despatch of 
the 21st ultimo, in which you say that a servile war is included 
in the means relied upon for weakening the South, I have to 
observe that the prospect of a servile war will only make other 
nations more desirous to see an end of the desolating and de- 
structive conflict. I am, &c., 

To Mr. Stuart. Russell." 



65 

The history of diplomacy affords no stronger specimen of 
stern rebuke than these few lines, from one who, without offence 
or inaccuracy, may be described as an anti-slavery statesman 
of the strictest school.* 

Nor was this language of asperity directed only to Mr. 
Seward. Mr. Adams had his full share of it. On the 20th 
of November he made an earnest and elaborate complaint as to 
the 'Alabama,' to which Earl Russell replied, a month later — 
using, inter alia, these words, which it is quite needless for us 
to characterize. 

"If it be sought to make her Majesty's Government respon- 
sible to that of the United States, because arms and munitions 
of war have left this country on account of the Confederate 
Government; that Confederate Government, as the other bellig- 
erent, may very well maintain that it has a just cause of com- 
plaint against the British Government, because the United 
States Arsenals had been replenished from British sources. Nor 
would it be possible to deny, that, in defiance of the Queen's 
Proclamation, many subjects of Her Majesty, owing allegiance 
to her crown, have enlisted in the armies of the United States. 
Of this fact you cannot be ignorant. Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment therefore have just grounds of complaint against both of 
the belhgerent parties, but most especially against the Govern- 
ment of the United States, for having systematically, and in 
disregard of that comity of nations, which it was their duty to 
observe, induced subjects of Her Majesty to violate those orders 



* So, seem to think all the leading men of this school. On the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation appearing, Sir T. Fowell Buxton wrote to the Evening 
Mail : — " In your paper of to-day you ask " whether the sons of Wilberforce 
and of Buxton, who have all been brought up in the teaching of their fathers, 
now share the opinions of the present Emancipation Society as to the Procla- 
mation of Mr. Lincoln." 

If the Proclamation means anything — if it is not a dead letter — it means to 
attack the weak point of the South by exciting an insurrection among the 
slaves — an insurrection which would commence by producing untold misery to 
many isolated families of whites, and would inevitably end in a wholesale 
massacre of the unarmed, ill-organized, ignorant negroes. Can you seriously 
ask whether the sons of Wilberforce and of Buxton approve this? 

In the cause of the negro himself, I cannot regard with approval the act of 
Mr. Lincoln, which, if effective, must bring about " so horrible a termination 
of slavery" as a servile war." 

5 



66 

wliicli in conformity with her neutral position she has enjoined 
all her subjects to obey." 

This, however, was guarded and moderate language compared 
with the last extract from this part of the dreary correspondence 
which we have temper and patience to make. Especially is 
attention called to the final question addressed by Earl Russell 
to the representative of the once proud United States. 

" I must ask first," says Lord Russell to Mr. Adams, "What 
are the circumstances within the control of the Government, to 
which you allude ? Do you mean that Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment, in construing a penal statute, or in carrying into effect 
the provisions of a penal statute, should hurry at once to a de- 
cision, and seize a ship, building and fitting out at Liverpool, 
without being satisfied by evidence, that the provisions of the 
foreign enlistment act had been violated in the case of such 
vessel? Do you mean that Her Majesty's Government should 
dispense with proof and inflict injury upon the Queen's subjects, 
by seizing a ship, upon your mere assertion that the owners of 
the ship were violating the law ! If such is your meaning, I 
must reply that the Government of this country respect the law. 
They do not seize upon property, to the loss and damage of its 
owners, without proof that they are legally entitled to do so. 
Perhaps your meaning is that Her Majesty's Government should 
have proceeded on the opinion of Mr. Collyer without waiting 
for other authority. But here again I must reply that the usage 
of this country requires that the Government should consult 
their own legal advisers, and obtain the opinion of the law 
officers of the crown, before they proceed to enforce a penal 
statute. If you mean to contend, therefore, that a nation in a 
state of profound peace, should set aside the formalities of law, 
and act at once upon presumptions and surmises, I entirely dif- 
fer from you. * * * * 

"If you mean that her Majesty's Government wilfully delayed 
or neglected the measures by which the character of the Alabama 
could have been legally ascertained, I must give a positive and 
complete denial of the truth of any such assertion." 

Turning again to this side of the Atlantic — one hardly knows 
whether to smile or blush at the equanimity — almost frivolity, 
(for inappropriate jocularity seems to infect the whole Govern- 



67 

ment) with which an American Prime Minister accepts a sneer 
at the hands of one whom he dares not offend. Let the extracts 
speak for themselves : 

" Mr. Seward," wrote Lord Lyons on the 2d December, "with- 
out my having in any way led to the subject, spoke to me yester- 
day of the proposal made by France to Great Britain and Russia, 
to unite in advising the belligerents in this country to agree to an 
armistice. He said that he perceived that some of the European 
powers, all professing the most friendly feelings to this country, 
had been discussing its affairs amongst themselves, without 
taking the cabinet of Washington into their councils. However, 
as no official communication had been made to this Government, 
it was not called upon to give any opinion, or to say what it 
should or should not have done, if any proposal had been made 
to it. If any of the European powers concerned, should offer 
explanations on the subject, this Government would receive them 
respectfully, but would not be disposed to express any opinion 
on them." 

On the 19th, Earl Rugsell replied : — 

" I have received your lordship's despatch of the 2d instant, 
and with respect to Mr. Seward's remarks, unprovoked on your 
part, that he perceived that some of the European powers, all 
professing the most friendly feelings to the United States, had 
been discussing its affairs amongst themselves, without taking 
the cabinet of Washington into their councils, I have to instruct 
you to take an opportunity of observing to Mr. Seward, that, 
without taking other reasons into consideration, the perusal of 
the accounts of the distress in Lancashire, owing to the want of 
cotton, which he will find in all the newspapers, will furnish him 
with reason enough for the discussion of American affairs in 
Europe. Great numbers of Her Majesty's subjects are suffer- 
ing severe distress in consequence of the belligerent operations 
of the cabinet at Washington." 

Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, January 7th, 1863 : — 

" In obedience to your lordship's orders, I, this morning, took 
an opportunity of observing that without taking other reasons 
into consideration, the accounts of the distress in Lancashire, 
would furnish him with reason enough for the discussion of 
American affairs in Europe. 



68 

" Mr. Seward took the observation in very good part, and said 
that the distress of the operatives in Europe was, indeed, a most 
painful subject of reflection !" 

Our last citation refers not to the Secretary, but to Mr. Lin- 
coln himself. There is in it a force of truthfulness which ex- 
perates the blow. 

" The Proclamation," writes Lord Russell, on the 17th Janu- 
ary, 1863, " of the President of the United States, enclosed in 
your Lordship's despatch of the 2nd instant, appears to be of a 
very strange nature. It professes to emancipate all slaves in 
.places where the United States authorities cannot exercise any 
jurisdiction, nor make emancipation a reality, but it does not 
decree emancipation of slaves in any States or parts of States 
occupied by Federal troops, and subject to United States juris- 
diction, and where, therefore, emancipation, if decreed, might have 
been carried into effect. It would seem to follow, that in the 
Border States, and also in New Orleans, a slave-owner may re- 
cover his fugitive slave by the ordinary process of law ; but that 
in the ten States in which the Proclamation decrees emancipation, 
a fugitive slave, arrested by legal warrant, may resist and his 
resistance, if successful, is to be upheld and aided by the United 
States authorities and the United States armed forces. 

" The Proclamation therefore makes slavery at once legal and 
illegal, and makes slaves either punishable for running away 
from their masters, or entitled to be supported and encouraged 
in so doing, according to the locality of the plantation to which 
they belong, and the loyalty of the State in which they may 
happen to be. 

" There seems to be no declaration of a principle adverse to 
slavery in this Proclamation!. It is a measure of war, and a 
measure of war of a very questionable kind. 

" As President Lincoln has twice appealed to the judgment of 
mankind in his Proclamation, I venture to say I do not think it 
can, or ought to satisfy the friends of abolition, who look for 
total and impartial freedom for the slave, and not for ven- 
geance on the slave-owner." 

And now our limits are exhausted, and allow room for but a 
single comment. That the correspondence of the French 
Minister with his Government does not contain equally dis- 



69 

paraging comments on our domestic and foreign policy, the 
writer is far from affirming. They have not however been given 
to the world; for the 'Livre Jaune' is searched in vain for an 
unkind word, or the shadow of a sneer, or a rebuke. Yet to 
France, the tone of Mr. Seward and his satellites has been 
almost defiant. The policy of the Executive in its welcome to 
the Orleans adventurers, (who have gone home to patronize 
Mr. Kinglake,) has been offensive. To Great Britain, from the 
dismal December day when Mr. Seward, after conniving at the 
bluster about the Trent, kissed the rod and surrendered Mr. 
Slidell and Mr. Mason, — through the continuity of humiliations 
— the Gilchrist nolle prosequi — the Slave trade treaty — the 
Bermuda — the Sunbeam, (it may be the Peterhoff,) and the 
facts revealed in these Parliamentary papers, it has been — until 
very lately — to use a mild term — obsequious in the extreme. 
And the fruit of all this ! What is it ? Is it security ? Is 
it confidence that foreign intervention or the danger of a foreign 
war has been averted. Far — very far from it. Either may 
come at any instant. As a desperate resort, war may be pro- 
voked to save the abolition party. It looks very much as if it 
would be. Every hour that slips by, without voluntary pacifica- 
tion, makes our condition worse. We are feebler now than we 
were when Mr. Seward put his signature to the despatch giving up 
the Trent prisoners. Trust in our rulers is weakened. Our re- 
sources in money and men are less. Mr. Chase is rapidly " con- 
tinentalising" our currency. Conscription is the fierce order of 
the day. There are more than two hundred thousand poor fel- 
lows sleeping in their bloody graves, or wandering, crippled and 
mutilated, through the wards of our Hospitals, who, then, were 
alive and well, and healthy and strong, and willing to fight. And 
all this is the bitter fruit of Mr. Lincoln's home policy and Mr. 
Seward's diplomacy. 

Is there any remedy, or redress ? Let the page of our ancient 
history answer the question, for surely there is no treason in 
the echo of a voice which spoke words of warning long ago. 
Just eighty-six years have rolled by since a soldier of the 
Revolution, — of high renown and unquestioned patriotism, — 
under circumstances closely resembling those of our day of 
alarm and sorrow — thus wrote to a friend in Great Britain : 



70 

" The dismemberment of the Empire, the loss of commerce 
and power and consequence among nations, with the downfall 
of public credit, are but the beginning of those evils which 
must be followed by a thousand more, unless timely prevented 
by some lenient hand — some great State physician — aided and 
supported by men as independent in their fortunes as unsullied 
in their honour, who have never yet bowed their heads to Baal. 
Such a man, so supported, may yet save the sinking State by 
confirming that independence which this people are resolved to 
part with only when they leave the world. Such a man will do 
what all wise statesmen have done before him. He will be true 
to the welfare and interest of his country — and he will endeavour 
to preserve so much of the empire in prosperity and honour as 
the circumstances of the times and the mal-administration of 
those who ruled before him, have left this Government. The 
States of America are willing to be the friends but will never 
submit to be the slaves of the parent country. They are by 
consanguinity, by commerce, by language, and by the aifection 
which naturally springs from them, more attached to you than 
any other country under the sun. Therefore, spurn not the 
blessing which yet remains. Instantly withdraw your fleets 
and armies. Cultivate the friendship and commerce of America. 
Thus and thus only can you hope to be great and happy. Seek 
this in a commercial alliance — seek it ere it be too late, for 
there only must you expect to find it. These are the undisguis- 
ed sentiments of a man who rejoices not in bloodshed in this 
fatal contest."* 

These were momentous words, and they made their impres- 
sion, not on Ministers and Administration men, but on the wise 
and great men of England — Burke and Fox and Rockingham 
and Richmond and Conway — that small minority — fewer than 
we are now. They saw the inevitable future clearly, and 
thought it the part of wisdom and statesmanship voluntarily 
to say so, and not to be forced or shamed into it by the 
action of other nations. The time however had not come. 
Pharaoh's heart was still hard. National pride was tenacious 
and resentful. A flash of eloquence from a decrepit and dying 



* General Gates to Earl Thanet, Oct. 1777. 



71 

statesman, who, in his heart detested the war, arrested the 
counsels of moderation and stimulated the passion and fanati- 
cism of the day ; and a Stranger did recognize first — created for 
itself a sympathy on this side of the Atlantic, which yet exists 
— and the war went on for four years more, of blood, and sor- 
row, and shame, and debt, and at last Great Britain did, in 
1782, what she could have better done in 1778. 



Philadelphia, 

April 10th, 1863. 



LIBRARY OF 



CONGRESS 



013 700 987 



